The Alchemy of Neutron Star Collisions
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by Super User, 5 years ago
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Hosted by Matt O'Dowd
Written by Matt O'Dowd
Graphics by Leonardo Scholzer
Directed by Andrew Kornhaber
Produced By: Kornhaber Brown
When I was in astrophysicist school they taught us that all of the elements of the periodic table between carbon and iron were produced in onion shells by nuclear fusion in the cores of very massive stars during the last phases of their lives. And that the elements heavier than iron were synthesized in the following supernova explosion. That latter process is well understood – the star’s dead core collapses and protons are converted to neutrons. The surrounding shells ricochet outwards, along with a layer of the iron and nickel core. The latter is blasted by a wave of neutrons, which get rammed into the escaping nuclei. Some of those captured neutrons convert back to protons and so elements all the way up the periodic table can be made. This is the rapid neutron capture or r-process. The rapid part is because neutrons are captured faster than nuclei can decay, making it possible to build very heavy nuclei.
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Super User uploaded a new media, The Alchemy of Neutron Star Collisions
5 years ago