admin The origin of gold has puzzled scientists for centuries. As an element, gold cannot be created through normal chemical reactions. It takes 79 protons and 118 neutrons combined into a single atomic nucleus to make gold through nuclear fusion. However, this kind of intense fusion doesn’t happen often enough or close enough to explain the huge amounts of gold found on Earth and in the solar system.
For many years, the most common theory about the origin of gold was that it came from collisions between neutron stars. Scientists had believed that such collisions could explain how the universe was rich in gold. But a recent study has refuted this theory. According to Chiaki Kobayashi, the lead author of the study, regular supernovas can’t explain the gold in the universe because stars that are big enough to fuse gold before they die are rare. And when they explode, they turn into black holes that suck the gold into them.
The study also found that even magneto-rotational supernovas, a rare type of supernova that spins very fast and turns itself inside out as it explodes, cannot explain how much gold is found on Earth. During a magneto-rotational supernova, the dying star sends out jets of white-hot matter full of gold nuclei. However, gold-fusing stars are not common, and those that can fuse gold and send it out into space are even rarer.
The study discovered that even neutron stars and magneto-rotational supernovas combined cannot account for the amount of gold found in the solar system. While two neutron stars colliding produce a shower of gold, these accidents are very rare, and scientists have only ever seen it happen once. Even rough estimates show that they do not collide often enough to have produced all the gold in the solar system.
Ian Roederer, an astrophysicist at the University of Michigan, commended the thoroughness of the study, which looked at a vast amount of data and built strong models of how the galaxy changes and produces new chemicals. Roederer said the paper has a huge range of references, including those usually left out of such studies. However, despite the study’s findings, scientists are still unable to explain how gold was created. Some suggest that something scientists don’t understand must be making gold, while others believe that neutron stars may produce more gold than current models suggest. Astrophysicists have a lot of work to do before they can solve the mystery of gold’s origin.
