APOD: Where Your Elements Came From (2017 Oct 24)

[APOD Robot]

Where Your Elements Came From

Explanation: The hydrogen in your body, present in every molecule of water, came from the Big Bang. There are no other appreciable sources of hydrogen in the universe. The carbon in your body was made by nuclear fusion in the interior of stars, as was the oxygen. Much of the iron in your body was made during supernovas of stars that occurred long ago and far away. The gold in your jewelry was likely made from neutron stars during collisions that may have been visible as short-duration gamma-ray bursts or gravitational wave events. Elements like phosphorus and copper are present in our bodies in only small amounts but are essential to the functioning of all known life. The featured periodic table is color coded to indicate humanity's best guess as to the nuclear origin of all known elements. The sites of nuclear creation of some elements, such as copper, are not really well known and are continuing topics of observational and computational research.

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[Ann]

Fascinating!

I find it quite interesting that dying low-mas stars make so many heavy elements.

Ann

[Antony Rawlinson]

The key gives 6 colour-coded sources, but some heavy elements (starting with Technetium - element 43) are coded in grey, without an entry in the key. Do we not have information on them, or have I missed something?

[thearborist]

Those elements are created on Earth in the super colliders. Not (yet) known in nature.

[Boomer12k]

It is actually VERY interesting that it takes ALL OF THOSE PROCESSES....I would call it a MIRACLE for all that to come together, just right... and up to date with us.... let alone all the other lifeforms on Earth...the odds seem....er.... Astronomical...

:---[===] *

[Antony Rawlinson]

Those elements are created on Earth in the super colliders. Not (yet) known in nature.

Thanks - that make sense. I had thought that it was only the trans-Uranium elements that were created in labs. I see that it's saying that Plutonium occurs naturally, which was news to me.

[FJ Piccino]

Hey, all: Just a heads-up. There is a typo in your URL on this one.
Looks like it should be https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1710/N ... e_2000.jpg
BTW great site.

[MemyselfandI]

Where did the matter come from in the first place?

[neufer]

Click to play embedded YouTube video.

[neufer]

---

Where did the matter come from in the first place?

<<A Universe from Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather than Nothing is a non-fiction book by the physicist Lawrence M. Krauss, initially published on January 10, 2012 by Free Press. It discusses modern cosmogony and its implications for the debate about the existence of God. The main theme of the book is how "we have discovered that all signs suggest a universe that could and plausibly did arise from a deeper nothing—involving the absence of space itself and— which may one day return to nothing via processes that may not only be comprehensible but also processes that do not require any external control or direction.">>

[Antony Rawlinson]

Don't miss this animated version of Tom Lehrer:
http://www.privatehand.com/flash/elements.html

[BDanielMayfield]

Those elements are created on Earth in the super colliders. Not (yet) known in nature.

Thanks - that make sense. I had thought that it was only the trans-Uranium elements that were created in labs. I see that it's saying that Plutonium occurs naturally, which was news to me.

That statement by thearborist about the gray coded elements not being known in nature is not precisely true. This periodic table is also somewhat out of date. The gray elements are produced in kilonova explosions.

Bruce

[JGeezer]

This is great, and I wanted to print a large version but the full size image is missing:

"The requested URL /apod/image/1710/Nuclelosynthesis2_WikipediaCmglee_2000.jpg was not found on this server."

Does APOD monitor this forum, and can someone resolve that?

Thanks.

[bystander]

This is great, and I wanted to print a large version but the full size image is missing:

"The requested URL /apod/image/1710/Nuclelosynthesis2_WikipediaCmglee_2000.jpg was not found on this server."

Does APOD monitor this forum, and can someone resolve that?

Thanks.

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1710/N ... e_2000.jpg

[Fred the Cat]

This periodic table has stood the test of time so far. Attempts to create others have not gained a foothold. It does make one think another version (for example) might explain unknown aspects of the creation of our chemistry.

Maybe time will tell.

[BDanielMayfield]

Those elements are created on Earth in the super colliders. Not (yet) known in nature.

Thanks - that make sense. I had thought that it was only the trans-Uranium elements that were created in labs. I see that it's saying that Plutonium occurs naturally, which was news to me.

That statement by thearborist about the gray coded elements not being known in nature is not precisely true. This periodic table is also somewhat out of date. The gray elements are produced in kilonova explosions.

Bruce

Edit: Some of the grey coded elements are also daughter elements in the decay chains of elements like Uranium. They are thus definately found on Earth in trace amounts.

[Chris Peterson]

It is actually VERY interesting that it takes ALL OF THOSE PROCESSES....I would call it a MIRACLE for all that to come together, just right... and up to date with us.... let alone all the other lifeforms on Earth...the odds seem....er.... Astronomical...

What about all the processes that don't happen, that have resulted in a Universe so impoverished of the other 2,567,845 useful elements that would have created so many amazing things? It's a cosmological disappointment of the highest order.

[Antony Rawlinson]

It is actually VERY interesting that it takes ALL OF THOSE PROCESSES....I would call it a MIRACLE for all that to come together, just right... and up to date with us.... let alone all the other lifeforms on Earth...the odds seem....er.... Astronomical...

:---[===] *

That's the strong anthropic principle in a nutshell. It may be a universe with a vanishingly small likelihood of existing, but the fact that we're here to observe it means it's the only one possible.

[neufer]

The key gives 6 colour-coded sources, but some heavy elements (starting with Technetium - element 43) are coded in grey, without an entry in the key. Do we not have information on them, or have I missed something?

Those elements are created on Earth in the super colliders. Not (yet) known in nature.

These are all naturally occurring elements.

The grey ones are short lived radioactive elements (like Radium) that are constantly being
produced in small quantities as decay products of long lived radioactive elements such as Uranium.

<<Of the elements with atomic numbers 1 to 92, most can be found in nature, having stable (such as hydrogen), or very long half-life (such as uranium) isotopes, or are created as common products of the decay of uranium and thorium (such as radon). The exceptions are elements 43, 61, 85, and 87; all four occur in nature, but only in very minor branches of the uranium and thorium decay chains, and thus all save element 87 were first discovered by synthesis in the laboratory rather than in nature (and even element 87 was discovered from purified samples of its parent, not directly from nature).

All of the elements with higher atomic numbers have been first discovered in the laboratory, with neptunium and plutonium later also discovered in nature. They are all radioactive, with a half-life much shorter than the age of the Earth, so any atoms of these elements, if they ever were present at the Earth's formation, have long since decayed. Trace amounts of neptunium and plutonium form in some uranium-rich rock, and small amounts are produced during atmospheric tests of nuclear weapons. These two elements are generated from neutron capture in uranium ore with subsequent beta decays (e.g. ²³⁸U + n → ²³⁹U → ²³⁹Np → ²³⁹Pu).

Transuranic elements can be artificially generated synthetic elements, via nuclear reactors or particle accelerators. The half lives of these elements show a general trend of decreasing as atomic numbers increase. There are exceptions, however, including several isotopes of curium and dubnium. Further anomalous elements in this series have been predicted by Glenn T. Seaborg, and are categorised as the “island of stability.”

Heavy transuranic elements are difficult and expensive to produce, and their prices increase rapidly with atomic number. As of 2008, the cost of weapons-grade plutonium was around $4,000/gram, and californium exceeded $60,000,000/gram. Einsteinium is the heaviest transuranic element that has ever been produced in macroscopic quantities.>>

[Ann]

That's why I think that complex life is so rare in the Universe. So many factors have to come together to create the right environment for life forms such as ourselves to come into existence.

I realize that there is another way of looking at this, which is to say that since we exist in the first place, the Universe has to be so tolerant of the existence of at least simple life that simple life has to be common, and if simple life is common, complex life can't be too rare.

Then again, it is not so clear what "not too rare" actually means. It could conceivably mean that every there might be complex life in one out of every hundred exo-solar systems and intelligent life in, oh, one solar system out of a million? The latter figure ought to mean that there are very many intelligent species in our own galaxy alone.

On the other hand, "not too rare" might conceivably mean that there is complex life on no more than one hundred planets in the entire Milky Way, and no other intelligent and technological civilizations than our own. And maybe there is intelligent life in only, say, one galaxy out of a thousand, or even fewer than that.

Ann

[RJN]

Hey, all: Just a heads-up. There is a typo in your URL on this one.
Looks like it should be https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1710/N ... e_2000.jpg
BTW great site.

This URL typo has now been fixed in the main NASA APOD. I apologize for the mistake.

- RJN

[Chris Peterson]

That's why I think that complex life is so rare in the Universe. So many factors have to come together to create the right environment for life forms such as ourselves to come into existence.

I look at data like we see in today's APOD and it reminds me of the ubiquity of physical law across the entire Universe. That the same stuff happens everywhere. Which would mean that complex life may well be found everywhere, as well.

[tomatoherd]

It is actually VERY interesting that it takes ALL OF THOSE PROCESSES....I would call it a MIRACLE for all that to come together, just right... and up to date with us.... let alone all the other lifeforms on Earth...the odds seem....er.... Astronomical...

What about all the processes that don't happen, that have resulted in a Universe so impoverished of the other 2,567,845 useful elements that would have created so many amazing things? It's a cosmological disappointment of the highest order.

What 2+m elements are you talking about?

[BDanielMayfield]

It is actually VERY interesting that it takes ALL OF THOSE PROCESSES....I would call it a MIRACLE for all that to come together, just right... and up to date with us.... let alone all the other lifeforms on Earth...the odds seem....er.... Astronomical...

What about all the processes that don't happen, that have resulted in a Universe so impoverished of the other 2,567,845 useful elements that would have created so many amazing things? It's a cosmological disappointment of the highest order.

Interesting observations gentlemen. Boomer’s is based on what actually exists, while Chris’ is based on what never has existed. Which is more solidly based, I ask rhetorically?

Bruce

[neufer]

That's why I think that complex life is so rare in the Universe. So many factors have to come together to create the right environment for life forms such as ourselves to come into existence.

I look at data like we see in today's APOD and it reminds me of the ubiquity of physical law across the entire Universe. That the same stuff happens everywhere. Which would mean that complex life may well be found everywhere, as well.

<<Complex existence is widely agreed upon in the area of depth psychology. At the core of any complex is a universal pattern of experience, or archetype. In Jung's theory, complexes may be conscious, partly conscious, or unconscious. Two of the major complexes Jung wrote about were the anima (a node of unconscious beliefs and feelings in a man's psyche relating to the opposite gender) and animus (the corresponding complex in a woman's psyche).>>