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When the average person looks around the universe, they don’t stop and think, “Wow, there is just too much gold.” That is, however, what many astronomers and other scientists think.
Not because the amount of gold (and other heavy elements) is causing any type of problem (the opposite, in fact) but because based on what they know of how gold is created, there shouldn’t be so much of it in the universe.
For some time now, scientists have been trying to figure out exactly how and why there is so much of it out there, but one group might have found an answer. At least a partial one.
First, let’s look at why it is believed that there is more gold than there should be. At the big bang and for some time after it, various elements were created. Light elements like hydrogen and helium were formed relatively easily as the universe cooled. Atomic nuclei were able to capture electrons, which created vast amounts of these very common elements.
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Heavier elements are more difficult to make since they require far more protons and neutrons to come together. The creation of all of the elements up to iron (which has 26 protons, about 30 neutrons, and 26 electrons) can be explained either from the natural cooling of the universe or the forging of these elements via nuclear fusion within stars. The extraordinary temperature and pressure creates elements like iron without much trouble.
A team of researchers set out to understand how these heavier elements, including gold, were created in the quantities that are observed in the universe. In a paper published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, the researchers explain how it is understood that some of these elements are made:
“Roughly half of the elements in our universe heavier than iron are synthesized through the rapid neutron capture process (r-process). Despite this recognition, identifying the astrophysical sites that give rise to the necessary conditions for an r-process has remained challenging.”
Some of the events in the universe that have the necessary conditions to go through the r-process include things like when neutron stars merge, the proto-neutron star winds during a supernovae, and the outflows of black hole accretion disks.
These don’t happen frequently enough, or early enough in the evolution of the universe, to account for the amount of these heavy elements. When trying to understand this issue, the researchers looked at data from both NASA and ESA telescopes that was gathered back in 2004 for other types of research.
What they found was information that suggested that magnetars may be responsible for somewhere between 1 and 10% of all of the heavy element creation in our galaxy. A magnetar is a specific type of neutron star that has a very strong magnetic field. The team had a hypothesis that if the magnetars were creating these heavier elements, they would be able to identify it in the light coming from the stars.
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To prove their theory, they looked back at the data gathered during a 2004 giant flare that took place on a distant magnetar. What they saw matched with their predictions very closely. The team wrote:
“The finding that magnetars produce heavy elements, as just the second directly confirmed r-process source after neutron star mergers, has implications for the chemical evolution of the galaxy. In particular, giant flares offer a confirmed source that promptly tracks star formation.”
This is good evidence that this is indeed where at least least some of the heavier elements came from, helping to balance the scales between what is observed and what is expected. Additional data will be needed to get a better understanding of just how much of a given heavy element might be created in this type of environment.
Fortunately, NASA is set to launch the Compton Spectrometer and Imager (COSI) in 2027. This will be able to gather the specific type of data needed to test their theory further.
If you thought that was interesting, you might like to read about 50 amazing finds on Google Earth.