I’ve heard this said.
Is it true that all of the heavier metals on earth originated from older stars that went supernova and the resulting cosmic debris was collected in the earth’s accretion disk when it formed 4 billion years ago?
http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/ask_astro/answers/980226a.html
According to that page, it looks like yes, almost totally. But small amounts of metals as heavy as iron, particularly oxygen and lighter, can also be spread by massive stars via stellar winds.
Yes.
Yes, we are stardust. And we are golden.
Now could someone please point out the way back to the garden?
Not only are we made of star materials, but many of those same old atoms that originated in the stars have been recycled through living organisms many times over. Just think, atoms and molecules in you started in stars and have been in plants, and dinosaurs, and birds, and fish…
I could look up cites if anyone is interested.
Anything heavier than iron is made only in supernovas. Only hydrogen and helium existed in the primordial soup. Elements up to and including iron are made in the interiors of ordinary stars, but I don’t see any mechanism of their getting into space to be recycled, so again supernovas would seem to be the only source or at least the only significant source of them. Maybe some of the lighter elements are ejected in ordinary novas, I don’t know.
Many moons ago, Scientific American had an article about a series of uranium deposits in South Africa which were dense enough to sustain a natural chain reaction over a period of many years. That would indicate that at least some of the earth’s heavy metals were formed by a type of transmutation slightly different than that of simple radioactive breakdown.
Still, most if not all of the original material seems to have spawned from supernovas.
FWIW, I am currently reading a pretty interesting book that covers this topic: Atom by Lawrence M. Krauss. The book tells the story of a single oxygen atom from immediately after the Big Bang, through the formation of stars and planets, its participation in life on Earth, and onward to the end of the universe.
All the heavy metals on earth originated from Black Sabbath.
Even hydrogen took a few second before it was formed, whereas oxygen took at least a few million years to form.
Didn’t Pat Boone do some Heavy Metal thing a while back? While he was certainly popular many years ago, AFAIK he never went supernova.
SC
Yes, but that uranium came from a supernova. And it was the same kind of fission as in an ordinary uranium reactor. Not the same as radioactive decay, to be sure.
Having just watched Cosmos on DVD, I clearly recall a mention of red giants shedding up to half of their mass before shrinking into white dwarfs (dwarves?). That’s how you get a Ring Nebula. So, there is a way to eject elements lighter than iron without going thru a supernova.
Don’t prominences, flares, and such send out material into space? While I am absolutely sure that most of that is Hydrogen and Helium nuclei, it seems likely that a stray atom of a heavier element should be included here and there.
Hang around a big star, for a few billion years, and you are talking about a fair amount of heavy material.
Tris
“It should be possible to explain the laws of physics to a barmaid.” ~ Albert Einstein ~
“You should see the place where Einstein used to drink!” ~ Triskadecamus ~
Unless I’m mistaken, while you need a supernova to create anything heavier than iron, it’s the presence of iron that causes the supernova in the first place. Thus iron is also only available to us by ejection from supernovae.