Astro Alchemy: Where Rare Elements Come From
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- Опубликовано: 3 окт 2023
- How do you make gold? Simply bombard a nucleus with countless neutrons before it can decay.
Special Thanks to Prof. Rob Jeffries from the Keele Astrophysics Group for his expertise in this area.
Further reading:
r-process nucleosynthesis and kilonovae from hypermassive neutron star post-merger remnants - doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stac3128
The Complete Explanation of the Nuclear Magic Numbers - www.sjsu.edu/faculty/watkins/...
JWST detection of heavy neutron capture elements in a compact object merger - doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2307.0...
wow, why'd ancient alchemists have so much trouble with this simple task for so long? just use neutron stars smh
Right, basic stellar transmutation
Ezpz
Because they didn't have telescopes yet? Lol
Proton beams and neutron bombardment is how we do benchtop alchemy. The yields are very low.
@@ardellolnes5663True, if the ancient alchemists had just invented telescopes, they could definitely create massive neutron stars to transmute elements.
@@Ryann9Silly ancients. I'm making a neutron star right now.
I am a physicist. During my undergrad years I became stupified to discover that nucleons respect the same type of distribution rules in the nucleii as electrons do around atoms. The fact was cool enough by itself, and study the consequences of isotopes behaviors made it even more interesting. But what I was really surprised with was the fact that I had not seen this information anywhere before!
It is truly gratifying to watch such a well crafted video that explains in simple terms, yet carefully, this type of nuclear behavior. I hope people get inspired by your work as much as I did learning about it on the past.
Same! In addition, I worked for a bit for Prof Arcones, who co-coined the term Kilonova, on the sim for the synthesis of elements following a neutron-star merger, aka a Kilonova. It was months before LIGO went online, so just before we finally had real data to compare. It's a very exciting time for nuclear astrophysics!
Thanks. Very awesome video. I learned something.
definitely all the theories of small particles will change, but now not necessary
the less people know, the less competition....
I was going to post my own comment but noticed you'd touched on my points quite well, so I'm going to piggyback off of it. Riding on the back of giants and so on.
Anyway, I'm infinitely interested the construction of reality and you make a damn good point about the content of his work being seemingly hidden away from the world. There are few things I value more than people willing to translate dense topics into something most people can appreciate, even if they might not know the fundamentals of physics.
Can I ask your thoughts on the debate about String Theory and Stagnation in physics? I've got a strong sense there's some sort of manufactured bottleneck preventing breakthroughs, maybe because of some self-protecting academic ego group, maybe because the government is ahead of where we're at publicly and there are profound things just ahead of our current understanding.
Duuude. Videos like this are why the internet should exist.
Agree
Yes agreed ,It was originally created to seek information that are unavailable on offilneterms not for some random dude making tiktoks .
I am 43 years old and this is the first time I have ever heard this explanation. My mind is blown. Ashamed to say I always assumed that the intense heat and pressure of supernovae just "fused" all the heavier elements. This was also explained so clearly and simply that it made complete sense -- thank you!
Thank you for covering topics that are hard to figure out without following a University course on that topic, because trying to figure it out by reading Wikipedia or searching for papers is prohibitively hard.
you might not upload as much as other channels but each video is of outstanding quality!
Wow, why is this not more well known? I pop-sci this stuff to a reasonably advanced level everyday and most of this was new to me!
Perhaps the best elements is the neutron we accumulated along the way
I'm trying to avoid hyperbolics, but this is the best explanation I ever heard on this subject.
It feels more shocking to me now, in terms of actual new information and clarity than what I recall watching Carl Sagan's videos when I was a kid.
It also hints that natural decay is slower neutron capture, my feeling is there is some sort of a balance between the two.
This channel is so underrated
Love the cute little blobmans. Also I did not know this, thank you so much for educating me! I always wondered how this worked :)
You're team or just you are simply the best science-communicators on youtube, point! Every time i'm amazed how clean you're videos are to explain the most complicated topics there are. Keep it up and i'll always use youre vids in my classroom!
This is so interesting! Thank you! I can't believe not understanding this never bothered me more, but now that I understand it, it is so cool! Keep making these, please! :D
I love your videos they hit my sweet spot of interest and difficulty of comprehension. Keep it up
These videos man, instant bangers all the time. You casuallly explained nuclear physic concepts I pieced together studying this material for years.
I’ve been waiting for someone to make this video for years, and I’m so happy it was you. Wonderful work as always.
0:00 - Universe began with atoms possessing 1, 2, or rarely 3 protons.
0:09 - Over time, stars formed larger elements via fusion, up to iron (26 protons).
0:30 - Questions arise about the origin of heavier elements.
0:39 - Importance of trace and rare Earth elements like iodine, neodymium, etc., in biology and technology.
1:04 - Heavier elements are rare, often incorrectly attributed solely to supernovae.
1:19 - Supernovae insufficient for forming elements heavier than iron.
1:55 - Introduction to neutron capture as the primary mechanism for creating heavier elements.
2:03 - Role of neutrons in atomic nuclei; balancing strong nuclear force and proton repulsion.
2:48 - Optimal neutron-proton ratios shift with increased atomic mass, following a line of stability.
4:04 - Coulomb repulsion increases as nucleus size grows; mitigated by adding neutrons.
5:16 - Larger elements created through neutron capture, either slowly (s-process) or rapidly (r-process).
5:36 - S-process involves slow addition of neutrons, typically in fusing regions of stars.
6:37 - Iron acts as seed, accumulating neutrons in new stars before being ejected into space.
7:02 - R-process involves rapid bombardment of neutrons; occurs in neutron-rich environments like supernovae or kilonovae.
8:00 - Open questions regarding the escape of newly formed atoms and the frequency of neutron star mergers.
8:21 - Peak of heavy element production likely 10-11 billion years ago; tapered off since.
8:47 - Neutron star mergers may contribute more to heavy elements than supernovae, based on models.
8:49 - Spectrographic data from James Webb Space Telescope backs up the role of neutron star mergers in heavy element creation.
9:02 - Previous evidence from 2017 also supports this theory.
- 9:17: Gravitational decay in neutron stars is weak, taking hundreds of millions of years for mergers to occur.
- 9:38: Some large r-process elements exist in older stars too soon to be explained by neutron star mergers alone.
- 9:50: Alternative sources like fast-spinning, highly magnetized hypernovae could contribute to early heavy element formation.
- 10:21: "Magic numbers" in nucleon shells influence stability and the ability to add more neutrons.
- 11:55: Peaks in isotopic abundance occur at these magic numbers.
- 12:55: For R-process elements, the peaks shift to the left of S-process peaks due to fewer protons and thus less mass.
- 14:00: Overall, large elements are primarily formed in neutron star mergers, with some contribution from supernovae, and are influenced by magic numbers.
that must've taken a bit of work!
thankyou 🙂
@@davidevans3227 or it was made by an AI
@@Irondragon1945 noooo!
haha.. maybe i hadn't thought of that..
thanks lol 😉
@@Irondragon1945but usually AI puts an emoji and sign the end of their message no?
I've been asking the question "Why is Iron the stopping point of fusion?" for some time now. No where I looked provided a explanation, they basically said it can't happen. This was an amazing video. You've earned one additional subscriber today! Could you do a video on the heat death of the universe? How quantum tunneling creates iron giants & black holes? It'd love to see how you would do that!
Yes, fusion does not stop at iron for the popsci reasons you see all over the internet. Adding a helium nucleus to iron or nickel would be EXOthermic. The reason it stops is because it takes such high temperatures to initiate the reaction that the background photons are energetic enough to break up heavy nuclei.
It's simple - elements beyond iron contain more energy than the sum of their parts. Elements up to and including iron don't, hence they are easily created. If I want to make sandwich, I need certain ingredients. If I want to make something beyond iron, I can't fuse those ingredients together to make the heavier atom. If you look at the binding energy per nucleon you should hopefully, remember my poor sandwich analogy 😆
Wow, I thought I knew all of this, but I learned something new today. Great video!
Glad to see the abstract 3d style i love is still here.
Really cool stuff!!
Man. As a high school physics teacher I'm really getting annoyed. Is everything I know wrong? I guess I can look at it as job security. Keep it coming!
According to the sciemtific method, nothing we know is right, only not yet proved wrong!
@@arinb.756 highschool physics ignores the scientific method, and continues teaching things that were already proven wrong, and that are logically incoherent in the first place.
Due to an unreasonable urge to oversimplify and twist everything, eventually it becomes garbage
@@YounesLayachi Even if, say, Einstein's Theory of Relativity proves Newton wrong, in most cases Newton's equations and principles are far easier to work with. In essence, it might not be technically correct but if it works then it works.
I have my Physics HSC in a few weeks and this video could not have come at a better time, amazing as always!
What an eye opening experience ❤
The best science videos in my subscriptions ❤️
I've learned something new today, thank you!
Ohey so this is what your new animations look like. I was wondering how you would handle new stuff after losing your old models.
The new ones are pretty cute.
Physics like this are so profoundly complex and amazing. I learn something new about the quantum world everytime I research into it.
It's so bizarre and fascinating.
This is beyond me, but I appreciate the enormous complexity and vast stretches of time it took for the universe and countless gone stars to build out all our elements.
cant believe this is the first time I'm hearing of energy shells for non-electrons
I get really excited when I see another video has came out on this channel. I learned a few things from this video, thank you. Keep it up!
Cannot believe this guy has just explained 7+ years of school/college physics in one video.
Holy crap youre so underrated. These videos are amazing and shpuld be getting more views!
Best RUclips channel there is, great graphics, explained in a way that are intuitive, I can see this being an exceptional resource for current and coming generations to become more knowledgeable on fields that are otherwise daunting. Great work as always.
Thank you for that in depth explanation. I knew that I only had a very simplified understanding of neutron capture and radioactive decay but wasn’t sure where to begin.
Yaaay, you're back!
I am no physicist but I love vulgarisation videos. The process of the creation of heavier elements has always been glossed over most of the time, as you said, with blanket statements like "supernovae create them", so thank you for this deeper analysis. I was wondering if you could make a video about the "hole" in the table of nuclides, between around lead and radium. I now get that this has to do with the magic numbers, but this is such a sudden break compared to the lighter elements, even compared to previous magic numbers thresholds.
Incredibly informative.
Another highly educational piece , well done !
and once more 'But Why' defends his title as the best RUclips channel
I've never heard ANY of this before. Thank-you so much for picking up where everyone else leaves off or fears to tread. For years I have wondered why neutron star collisions "overtook" supernovae as the primary theorized originators of heavy elements - as opposed to merely being a birthplace alongside supernovae. Finally! An answer as to why killanova are now theorized to be the primary birthplace of the heavier elements.
This was a key idea we wanted to include.
Wow! It is amazing the amount of generalized incorrect information such as fusion in this video shown NOT to be responsible for much of our heavier element creation. Fascinating explanation.
Nice job coming back from the data loss, new models look nice
This is the best channel of entire youtube
Fascinating video! It's been a while, glad to see new content.
These cute little creatures are adorable but I just love the weird stick creatures. Please have a combination of both!
What I love about this channel is that the creator is one of the rare science educators That is able to focus on key concepts and break them down in a very clear manner without ever taking the lazy way out by resorting to facile analogies. There is a delicate balance between simplifying complex topics by extracting and explaining the core principles vs. hand waving everything away with useless analogies That explain nothing.
This guy is one of the best out there
0:00 - Introduction
0:02 - Early Universe and Atom Formation
0:11 - Fusion in Stars
0:24 - Limitation of Fusion to Iron
0:30 - Importance of Rare Elements
0:57 - Popular Explanation: Supernovae
1:19 - Limitations of Supernovae
1:50 - Neutron Capture Mechanism
2:01 - Role of Neutrons in Nuclei
2:26 - Proton-Neutron Ratios
3:05 - Line of Stability
4:06 - Adding Neutrons to Large Elements
5:11 - Slow vs. Rapid Neutron Capture
5:53 - Slow Neutron Capture in Stars
6:59 - Formation of Heavy Elements in Stars
7:04 - Rapid Neutron Capture
7:46 - Neutron Star Mergers and Kilonovae
8:06 - Rate of Neutron Star Mergers
9:00 - Evidence from Spectrographic Analysis
10:10 - Timeframe of Neutron Star Mergers
12:06 - Caveats and Magic Numbers
14:04 - Conclusion
Made by feeding the transcripts to chatgpt.
Bruh
This is really, really well done. Easy to follow and an excellent introduction for beginners to this area of study. 👍👍
Excellent! Lots of good info and well-presented. Please give us more.
14:02 r process peaks are also sharper, I'd imagine because hitting a magic number is a specific, discrete barrier. While coming down from having a ton of neutrons added is a lot less selective.
The r-process peaks are more like humps covering 4-5 atomic numbers. The reason I think is because there are a variety of decay pathways to get back to the line of stability, not just a series of beta decays.
Never saw such beautiful and detailed videos in my entire life
Excellent. I wish I had these videos when I was in college.
This was really cool, thank you!
hey I'm in love with your channel Imma watch all your videos tyvm for all the hard work making them they are sooo interesting and sometimes crazy
that's some next level content
Wow this is really informative and even the animations have details in them :D
Excellent video
Very good video!
Good explanation. thankyou
Awesome video, please keep up the amazing work :D
please do a video on strong force !!!
Thank you so much for these videos ! ^_^
S-tier vid as always!
Very short summary:
Up to Iron, elements form in stars due to high heat and pressure. However, pretty much all heavier elements form when neutrons are either slowly (or rapidly) added to a nucleus...then neutrons decay in to protons. This process happening over and over again, for hundreds of years sometimes, eventually form heavier elements that get ejected in to space.
So your grandma's golden ring is the result of a very, VERY, limited supply of stuff that was built in probably hundreds of stars over millions of years. You just so happen to luckily get some of it in the form of a ring.
Thanks for this great video.
Excellent!
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Wow this is good explanation
Good stuff! Keep it up
Wow superb explanation, thanks you should get more subscriber!
Excellent. Thanks.
First of all great video and the first I have ever seen that explains the topic in depth. This video brings up a question about super novas of all types being more prevalent in the past rather than in the present. The James Webb Telescope can look into the far past very close to the beginning. So does the data confirm that super nova were much more common in the past rather than in the present?
Do you mean by direct measurement of their frequency of occurrence? There is probably some evidence for that now with the advent of high redshift supernovae surveys (which are actually looking for another type of supernova). However, the fact that the formation of (massive) stars was ten times more common in the past is well-established observationally. A core collapse supernova would still be a rare event though - maybe 1 every 20 years in a Milky Way sized galaxy.
Damn....well, today I learned ;)
Thanks for the info and awesome video!
So I totally just had one of those "ah ha!" moments I have to share because, well, I'm a nerd and also, what if yo know. Anyway. So I was watching the video you made on supernova explosions and how it works at the core just before this video and in that first one you mentioned the word "ash" in reference to the heavier fused material sinking building up around the shockwave around the core ECT. The ash bit is the point. That all pops in my head around a little past half way into this video though and as I'm thinning about the ash statement I'm also watching the neutrons and protons attaching themselves to the nucleus on the screen and now my mind flashes back to an image from a show I watched a few years back about anti matter. And I'm picturing animation of matter and antimatter coming together and annihilating the selves upon contact. How that was part of the big bang and how it should have been even but for some reason it wasn't and there was more matter than anti matter and this out universe was able to come into experience. Or something. Along those lines. What we need to focus on though is the annihilation part. When matter and antimatter touch and go boom. What's left over after an explosion? After fire? Ash, right?!? Remember these images are all going through my head just like this. First the first video and the "ash statement, then the nucleus on the screen gathering protons and neutrons currently and seeing them collide on the screen brings to mind the image of matter and antimatter colliding in the video from a few years back and them exploding to which I make a mental note of how antimatter is the best fuel because it loses no energy when I goes boom like that. Explosions have fire and fire makes ash and now I've come full circle all in about 5 seconds. But why. As I think about the images for a bit longer I remember the 0 energy loss and in my head I immediately delete one of the items and now I only have one. But hold up, energy can't be destroyed. Hawking proved this with hawking radiation. But if that's the case, if energy can only be transformed, the. In the beginning when matter and antimatter came together and left us with he universe we now have, what happened to all that energy? And that's a lot of freaking energy. The matter that makes up our universe is a tiny fraction of what was annihilated in the very beginning. It can't be destroyed and therefore, since the antimatter explosion happened in our realm of space time, albeit the first nano second after it's inception but still, means that the energy has to still be in our realm of space time. But how would that manifest. This energy that we can't see thats 90 percent of.... And boom goes the dynamite! Dark energy! Oh and the ash thing. What if wimps and the left over husks of antimatter? The "ash" if you would. Idk about that now though because of there ash left is it still 100 percent conversation? ...... You know, that was as climactic as it felt in my head. Probably could of shortened it up a bit. Maybe. Probably by a lot a bit actually... Eh...
Thank you. Come again 😁
Excellent.
This is so interesting
🎯 Key Takeaways for quick navigation:
00:00 🌌 *At the beginning of the universe, atoms had one, two, or rarely three protons.*
00:29 🌟 *Rare Earth elements, like neodymium and lanthanum, are crucial for technology.*
01:09 💥 *Elements heavier than iron are not formed from fusion in stars.*
02:03 🧪 *Neutrons play a role in atom nuclei, and stable nuclei require a balance of protons and neutrons.*
03:51 ⚖️ *Proton-neutron ratios tend to stick to a one-to-one ratio for lower mass nuclei.*
05:16 🔄 *Neutron capture is the mechanism for creating larger elements, and it can occur slowly or rapidly.*
07:32 🌌 *Rapid neutron capture occurs in environments with high neutron densities, like supernovae or binary star mergers.*
08:42 🌟 *Neutron star mergers are likely the source of most large elements in the galaxy.*
10:17 🔬 *Nuclei have energetic layers called shells, and adding neutrons to filled shells can be challenging.*
13:57 🌠 *Large elements are not formed by fusion due to high temperatures that would fragment them.*
Made with HARPA AI
This is so different from what we are told that it verges on lying.
great stuff ty
I did not believe you when you said the classic supernova thing we are taught is wrong. But after watching the video and reading the comments, i do accept it. Why do we keep teaching stuff that's wrong?
Teaching stuff that is wrong is like spherical cows - close enough approximations for most people. Stuff like this is trivia to most people, but it's better to have at least *some* understanding of the fundamentals, hence teaching people that we are "star-stuff" and made of elements produced in cores of stars and supernovas (since you already need to be in the top 10% of astronomy understanderers to even know what a neutron star is). Then people curious enough to look deeper, those of us who can't do the math but stayed at a Holiday Inn, can find our way to places like this and be a little more correct with a better layman's understanding without grasping the true complexities hidden underneath these (extremely helpful and remarkably well done) easy to understand graphics.
Yes, and now i can destroy ppl whenever I hear somebody say, heavy elements are created in supernovas.. I will SCREAM. NO, YOU IDIOT, it's by neutron capture. EVEN A CHILD WOULD KNOW THAT THE ENERGY NEEDED TO FUSE SUCH HEAVY ELEMENTS WOULD CREATE BURSTS OF PHOTONS THAT WOULD INSTANTLY DESTROY SAID ELEMENTS@@phibetakafka
They keep teaching the wrong stuff because the education system does not stay current. Plus there is big money in teaching the same concept that already exists because those who produced it make more money and increase ROI. This is a conspiracy theory but it seems many people want to keep the masses ignorant and entertained rather than educated and able to think for themselves.
wait, the world governments don't actually want the best for their citizens? nahh that's crazy talk. surely an undivided and educated populace is just the thing they need to maintain their power.
The next time you put on a piece of gold jewelry, just remember that not only is there a good chance that gold formed fairly close to the event horizon of a black hole, but many of its siblings likely didn't make it out. If stones could talk, the stories they could tell.
I worry this video is getting fewer views than usual because you changed your icon! I almost missed this myself
It’s a good day when you see a but why video uploaded
11:10 "Nucleons also adhere to this shell filling."
At this point in the video I took this to mean that protons and neutrons when 'added' together are more stable at a magic number.
12:34 "When a neutron shell is filled there are fewer protons"
At this point in the video it seems that neutron and proton shells are individually reaching these magic numbers since we fill the neutron shell without getting a magic number of total nucleons.
I think I got it now. btw, your videos are always reverse clickbait; the videos are way more interesting than the thumbnail and title suggests.
Yes, the magic numbers apply to the neutrons and protons separately.
EFV the ultimate creator 👌
Hello sir, could you kindly add all your videos to a playlist so I can watch them all on repeat? 🔥
Could the next magic number reveal the existance of new superheavy elements? Or is there something else to consider that prevents this, hence their absence?
amazing vid! Can I ask what music you used at the end of the video? thanks
more than likely something he created
When I read the nucleosynthesis page on Wikipedia, it mentions high mass stars end their fusion processes end on nickel, not iron. This video, and many others I have watched, mention their fusion stops on iron. Which is right?
excellent video. there is, however another theory that explains atom creation, and that is that stars and planet cores are made of matter where protons are sqeezed out, leaving neutronic matter. this matter is highly magnetic and very gravitational. it explains why planets and stars can have gravity strength greater than their smaller physical size would usually allow. it also explains why earth's core keeps producing new short lived radioactive elements who according to the other model, should have decayed long ago. in the theory proposed in the sixties about neutronic matter, stars and cores peel off as they are bombarded by electron rich fields and matter. this produces heavier elements much more easily, especially if one theorizes that perhaps protons are not at the center of an atoms true core, but surround neutron cores in onion layers just as electrons do. the problem with this theory is that neutrons would have to have an attractive force to each other from a 90° angle, or horizontal to their poles. we see such a strange attractive force all around us in the universe, maybe at neutron levels it is super strong and is exponential in attraction as more neutrons accumulate? do you know what this strange force is i am refering to?
At the beginning of this video, you mention the three elements from the early universe: hydrogen, helium, and lithium. On the video, three objects appear, one for hydrogen (a single red circle representing a proton), one for helium (two red circles for protons and two white circles for neutrons), and one that was probably meant to be lithium, except it has two red circles for protons and three white circles for neutrons, making it an isotope of helium.
well spotted
The new style is absolutely great, tho I will probably miss your old slighty cursed style for a while.
Great video! Are there chemical elements in neutron stars?
Top question. Yes - there are thought to be in the outer 1km or so - this is called the "crust". The crust can contain weird, neutron-rich and very heavy elements. This is because the "line of stability" that is discussed in the video is shifted towards more neutron-rich nuclei in dense environments like a neutron star. The high densities also stabilse these very heavy neutron-rich nuclei from radioactive decay and fission. When you go deeper than 1 km, these bizarre nuclei dissolve into a sea of (mainly) neutrons, with a small percentage of protons and electrons.
Yes! Firs...no wait.. Dammit, fell asleep on the sofa again. 😂 Love your videos!
Man i remember the old profile picture of this
*Slaps core of atom*
"This bad boy can fit so many neutrons in it"
My guess? Probably something to do with electron degeneracy deep inside a neutron star. I think once pressure, temperature and empty space become to intense and lack space, they’ll start making heavier elements from high intensity photons blasting through protons and neutrons that’ve joined. My guess.
Wake up babe, new But Why? video just dropped!!!
I did read a year or so ago that they thought the heavier elements were made in Neutron star explosion when two merge. Not sure if that is correct after watching this video?
Another fact I could get right if I looked up the Fermlab video.............is that mass is made by the Quarks inside the protons and neutrons kinetic energy.Their motion give mass. I guess like E=mc2
No mention of the weak force? It's the reason why neutrons will convert into protons, and it's the reason why we have radioactive decay. In the case of a neutron it's beta minus decay that occurs after the neutron capture to spontaneously convert it to a proton which changes the atomic number, and therefore changes the element itself.