Earth's birth - where did the atom come from?

"It's a game of stars, our condition is determined by the stars above us."

- Shakespeare, King Lear Act 4, Scene 3

"Brutus, the problem is in us, not in the stars."

- Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, Act 1, Sean 2

Shakespeare on Earth

Which of Shakespeare's two contradictions is true? both of them. Our condition is determined by the stars but the stars do not determine our condition. Earth and sky and we ourselves are not always what we look like today. It took us a long time to get to this point and understand it properly.

Where did these substances and atoms come from? One hundred years ago today, this question was beyond the scope of science.

Big Bang Theory

The Big Bang in the 1930s and then fourteen billion years ago, but the understanding of that time was incomplete. According to a scientist's calculation, all the elements came into being within ten minutes of the Big Bang. That is, as long as potatoes and meat are cooked, the elements of the universe were ready. This photo was incorrect. The veil of secrecy was lifted in the next few decades.

Hydrogen atom bomb

In 1939, German and American scientists proved that hydrogen atoms in the sun combine to form helium, which warms the sun and keeps our earth alive. This was the first observation of the transformation of one element into another, but where do the other elements come from? It was discovered by good telescopes, astronomy models and head-scratching scientists.

Better observations from better instruments have shown that young stars are made up not only of hydrogen and helium, but also of dozens of elements in older stars. Technesium, which is not found naturally on Earth because it runs out quickly, was also in these stars. This observation shows that the elements are still being formed in some way and not all the elements were there from the beginning of the universe.

Nucleosynthesis

This is explained by the famous 1957 paper on nucleosynthesis.

Hydrogen is a simple element. At the beginning of the universe, when quarks formed protons and neutrons and matter came into being, almost all of it was in the form of hydrogen. There was hydrogen everywhere. Hydrogen was found, stars were formed. The accumulation of a lot of mass started the fusion due to the extreme pressure of gravity. The reaction that makes the stars shine in the sky. Conversion of hydrogen to helium. This process was important for cosmology. Not in terms of elements. But when hydrogen is burned, then the real interesting process begins. The stars have been feeding on hydrogen for ages, but that has changed since they ran out of fodder.

How to create a Hydrogen bomb

Helium atoms are now found to maintain their temperature. Lithium, boron, beryllium and especially carbon are formed inside them. Burning helium doesn't provide that much energy, and the stars run out of fuel quickly in this new way, in the next few hundred million years. The little stars die then. Large masses of carbon called white dwarfs. Heavy stars (eight times heavier than our Sun) continue to fight, converting carbon into six more elements.

That is, elements up to magnesium are formed. It gives them a few hundred more years of life. But even bigger and hotter stars, with an inside temperature of five billion degrees, can burn these elements and live a few million years longer. They produce more elements that are up to iron. If iron is found in a star, scientists no longer feel the need to look at other elements. The discovery of iron means that all the elements lighter than this will be present in this star.

Can heavy elements be made by doing the same process with iron? The answer is no. Energy up to iron tells us that even combining atoms produces energy, but then more energy will be needed to combine these nuclei.

Making a heavier element than this is of no use to an energy-hungry star. Iron is the last stage of the natural age of the star. If the atomic number of iron is 26, then where did the heavier elements, from cobalt to uranium, come from? From the last hiccup of the death of the big stars. This is what happens on the last day of stars that are twelve times the size of the sun.

After the fusion process is over, the star cannot maintain its temperature. As the gas balloon shrinks as it cools, it also begins to shrink. The more it shrinks, the higher the gravitational pressure. Thousands of miles shrink in a matter of seconds. So much so that the substance in its core cannot maintain its state. Electrons and protons combine to form neutrons.

It then takes a rebound from the collapse and explodes. It is a supernova that will expand to millions of miles in the next month and have as much light as billions of stars. During this time, countless particles collide with each other with incredible momentum and cross the barrier beyond the iron. In this storm, the elements take on as many shapes as they can, becoming all the elements and all their isotopes. Those that are unstable turn into stable. The elements created by his death give a new look to the zoo. This is how all the elements of the universe are made.

What is present in our galaxy Milkyway

Our galaxy is just one of countless galaxies in the universe. Supernovae are a rare occurrence, but the age and size of the universe is so great that this cycle of stellar death has occurred hundreds of millions of times in this galaxy alone. There was such a supernova four billion six hundred million years ago today. The explosion scattered its material 15 billion miles away. There was space dust in this place which was the result of the death of at least two previous stars. The dust and the elements from this supernova began to meet. These random clouds took the form of a whirlpool.

The Process of creation World

Like the restless surface of a large pond. The center of a dense cloud in the middle is called the sun. Other large bodies are planets, moons, meteors, comets. Solar storms pushed light elements away. They became gas giants on the edge of the system called Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune, Uranus. The biggest gas giant is Jupiter, in which these elements are in a state that we cannot imagine in ordinary observation on Earth, but Jupiter has not been able to collect enough matter to become a star itself and a double star system has come into existence. Came.

How Earth Came to exist.

In all this commotion, the matter was accumulating 150 million miles away from this dense center. It had a higher proportion of heavy elements as the lighter elements moved away. This was the birth of our home, this land.