RR Phantom
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| Subject: Missing-Link Atoms Turn Up in Aftermath of Neutron-Star Collision Thu Oct 24, 2019 4:59 pm | |
| Two neutron stars smashed together and shook the universe, triggering an epic explosion called a "kilonova" that spit lots of ultradense, ultrahot material into space. Now, astronomers have reported the most conclusive evidence yet that in the aftermath of that blast a missing-link element formed that could help explain some confusing chemistry of the universe.
When that shaking — ripples in the very fabric of space-time, called gravitational waves — reached Earth in 2017, it set off gravitational-wave detectors and became the first neutron- star collision ever detected Immediately, telescopes all over the world whirled around to study the light of the resulting kilonova. Now, data from those telescopes has revealed strong evidence of strontium whirling in the expelled matter, a heavy element with a cosmic history that was difficult to explain given everything else astronomers know about the universe.
Earth and space are littered with chemical elements of different kinds. Some are easy to explain; hydrogen, made up in its simplest form of just one proton, existed soon after the Big Bang as subatomic particles began to form. Helium, with two protons, is pretty easy to explain as well. Our sun produces it all the time, smashing together hydrogen atoms through nuclear fusion in its hot, dense belly. But heavier elements like strontium are more difficult to explain. For a long time, physicists thought these hefty elements mostly formed during supernovas — like kilonova but on a smaller scale and resulting from the explosion of massive stars at the ends of their lives. But it's become clear that supernovas alone can't explain how many heavy elements are out there in the universe.
https://www.livescience.com/neutron-stars-explain-heavy-elements.html?fbclid=IwAR1DWQcMpB__1fhmP3NbaNzSNyD7giOx0uq8dqnaSeH1K3-_L_i_Jhskjvo |
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