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Where Your Elements Came From

Image Credit & License: Wikipedia: Cmglee; Data: Jennifer Johnson (OSU)

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap230108.html #APOD
#APOD
in reply to Astronomy Picture of the Day

Tc, Po, At, Rn, Fr, Ra, Pm, Ac, Pa & Np are generally produced synthetically in a nuclear reaction
in reply to Astronomy Picture of the Day

Another aspect of the universe that holds endless fascination for me. I always wanted a wall hanging of this, but was put off by the interior decor police.
in reply to Astronomy Picture of the Day

Finally... I have seen this image so many times... glad it's getting the recognition it deserves
in reply to Astronomy Picture of the Day

My first thought was: how do elements created from merging neutron stars escape? I know they're insanely dense with gravity some 2 billion times stronger than the Earth.

So I googled it and discovered that material is still ejected in an event called a "kilonova". So named because its peak brightness is about 1000 times that of a typical nova.

It's impossible to imagine the energy involved in events like that.

#elements #nova #gravity #kilonova #neutronstars #periodictable
in reply to Astronomy Picture of the Day

i guess:
Carl Sagan 👉 we all are made of stardust

i think this is even more exciting than any religious myth of creation
in reply to Astronomy Picture of the Day

@sellathechemist While we’ve got the astronomers looking at this we should remind them that not everything after helium is a metal 🤣
in reply to Astronomy Picture of the Day

For anyone in or going to Copenhagen, the Tycho Brahe Planetarium does a wonderful job of visualizing the connections between the elements in our bodies and cosmological events in their Cosmos interactive exhibit: https://en.planetarium.dk/exhibitions/ #planetariumcph
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@minkorrekt davon hattet ihr es doch kürzlich am Beispiel Gold .. vielleicht mögt ihr das nochmals beleuchten 🙂
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This always blows my mind. Earth is very element-rich. This table means at least one star system went through its entire birth-life-death cycle before our solar system even formed. And our solar system is pretty frickin’ old. Amazing.
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This is cool, but it should cover more trans-uranic elements, and colour them in another hue for those only observed when humans have created them in reactors.
in reply to Astronomy Picture of the Day

What's interesting / ironic is that helium on Earth is almost all ... of neutron-star origin.

That is, it's formed within the Earth's crust and core through decay of radioactive elements --- heavy stuff such as uranium, thorium, and plutonium naturally occurring. These give off beta particles --- a pair of protons and neutrons, which capture electrons and emerge as helium gas, a/k/a helium-4. Most of what humans capture is trapped in natural gas deposits and is recovered as part of the processing of gas wells.

So we get the second-most-abundant element in the Universe which is normally created from the Big Bang directly or stellar fusion through the long round-trip of neutron-star collisions and geological processes.
in reply to Astronomy Picture of the Day

.@APoD One minor punch up would be a metric for elements that are the result of decay of other elements. IE Radon is present from uranium decay.

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