 We are all stardust. That oxygen you breath? That comes from dying massive stars, ending their light in a supernova. The iron in your blood? Some massive stars dying, but mainly white dwarfs, the leftovers of dwarf stars like our own Sun, exploding. The gold ring on your finger? Mostly merging neutron stars, leftovers from supernovae. 192 comments
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@vicgrinberg I definitely going to hang on to that one and occasionally steal it. With credits, of course, but those are in it, so that's easy @localjoost Yeah, very well made :D If you are more academically inclined, here is a great article discussing the details: https://doi.org/10.1098/rsta.2019.0301 Triggered by a recent 3 min talk I gave, discussing the motivation to study the life of massive stars. @eco_amandine But slightly more dying low mass stars (like our own sun - before becoming a white dwarf, it will shed the outer layers!) than merging neutron stars 💍 @vicgrinberg And that Star you wished upon? The light has taken billions of years to reach your eyes and like your dreams, died eons ago @RADC Though all the stars we see with our naked eyes are close by in our own galaxy - so the light only takes thousands of years to reach us and the stars, most of which are rather long-lived, did not yet have the time to die. With a professional telescope one can see a lot of things long dead, though ;) @vicgrinberg That made you feel good, didn’t it? lol Then my work here is done for today my good Doctor @vicgrinberg Actually, this reminds me of a question that's been in my mind for a while now: Given the age of the Earth and input sources for different types of substances, and given the nature of half-lifing, how come there are any radioactive materials left on this planet? How come it hasn't all (or nearly all) half-lifed away by now? @vicgrinberg I also have another astronomical question to pose, but I don't want to de-rail this particular discussion thread by doing so. I'll post it separately.  @vicgrinberg Woodstock - Joni Mitchell (1970) @dpscifi All credit goes to the original maker - it has been used by soooo many astronomers since! @vicgrinberg @vicgrinberg I remember hearing that for the first time in a Stephen Hawking documentary. And then realizing I was crying after hearing "the elements that form our bodies are created in the heart of collapsing stars". :amor: SCIENCE :amor: @vicgrinberg I thought white dwarves didn't explode, just very slowly burned out? And isn't oxygen formed in fusion during a star's life in the main sequence? @comradeferret most don't - but then they also don't distribute their materials. Some do - if they get extra material from a neighbouring star and become too large. Or if two of them collide. They are the ones that are the origin of the corresponding elements on earth! @vicgrinberg Stars will last a long time to produce the higher elements. Humans think of next week, might be next year. But next millenium? Difficult. But next few hundred milion years.... That's a change of view. (christmas remembers us of something that is 2000 years in the past. Stars dosn't matter. (and eternity (äon) is in my opinion complete outside of time, not a very long time. So I will see Jesus ... Yea, not when but there? There outside of time. We have no words to tell about) @vash the ones that either get too much material from their neighbouring star or the ones that collide with another white dwarf! A simple lonely one will not, just become colder and dimmer with time... @vicgrinberg I see! And in Wikipedia I just read, that fainted white dwarves might become a black dwarves - objects that are not supposed to exist yet because the universe is too young. Wow! 🙂 @vicgrinberg @vicgrinberg @joekunk the chart is for the material that the solar system consists of - so material that has been created more than 4.5 billion years ago (age of solar system). The grey elements are the ones where all isotopes have a short half-life (time needed so half of what is there decays) - so by today pretty much nothing of them is left! @vicgrinberg Absolutely fantastic! Thank you for sharing. We are stardust. Novice question here: is stardust merely matter - a variety of elements - or does stardust also include energy? Is energy how elements of matter relate to one another, or a completely separate phenomenon? Okay, 2 super novice-y questions. 🤷🏻♀️ @gatitakicksass it's somewhat of a different thing - a bit too long to explain here, but this here is a good first intro (not by me, I just found it nice): https://www.khanacademy.org/science/hs-physics/x215e29cb31244fa1:introduction-to-energy/x215e29cb31244fa1:forms-of-energy/v/introduction-to-energy @vicgrinberg Thank you for sharing this and not laughing (at least out loud) at me.😊 I'm laughing at myself, totally appreciate that yessss, I need a refresher! @gatitakicksass not going to laugh at people who ask questions - especially not some that make sense! @vicgrinberg Excellent video, sparked some memory, concepts dusted off and bouncing around again. Thank you! 🤔 @vicgrinberg We are stardust @vicgrinberg @vicgrinberg the protons balancing charges throughout organic compounds? Big Bang +1 second.   @vicgrinberg cool, but what's behind the stardust...you must go deeper. Study the spiritual teachings and you will know one day. Science is great, but science cannot take us all the way. That can only happen through the scientific techniques of meditation. #learnmeditation #spiritualstudy #bekind @vicgrinberg The distribution of the elements from dying low mass stars looks strange: roughly all stable elements of the heavy half plus He, Li, C, N - but why nothing between N and Sr? @qpButterfleyes the lighter and heavier elements are created by different processes in the same kind of star! @vicgrinberg I was thinking: Is there any brief article explaining this chart and the impact of the solar system on the existing elements on earth? I am rather naive on this. Any hint highly appreciated! @tinderness maybe this https://news.osu.edu/the-stuff-of-the-universe-keeps-changing/?utm_source=College+of+Arts+and+Sciences&utm_campaign=acf6652da6-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2018_10_25_08_27_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_112a361dc0-acf6652da6-322755809 for your first question? For your second: the Earth is part of the solar system - it comprises the Sun and all the things orbiting it (including all the planets, one of them being the Earth!), so the above is also the origin of elements here on Earth :) @tinderness since you speak German, you may also be interested in these two: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3PhqOQYiGVY https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jWHAxbeWgPM #FasziAstro is a series of talks organized by @hausderastronomie! @vicgrinberg @hausderastronomie Very kind of you, danke schön für die Links. Currently live in Switzerland, but the Haus der Astronomie looks very interesting! @vicgrinberg @vicgrinberg when you mention white dwarfs exploding, are you referring to type Ia supernovae? @vicgrinberg "Le vase de Pepi" an excellent novel by the French astrophysicist David Elbaz, tells the story of an iron atom. It deserves to be translated into English. @ROG definitely would lovw to read, alas I took Latin in high school to avoid French 😅 @vicgrinberg Have long maintained that this is more valuable to teach in schools than just the 'plain' periodic table - it ties chemistry and physics together! But, it throws up so many questions, such as that 'gold ring on your finger' - how come there is enough of it here, right now, to make the ring, and yet there are no (apparent) nearby 'merging neutron stars' or 'dying low mass stars'... @StevePLMarquis @vicgrinberg Beautifully said !👍 I can't agree more :) There is only one problem...if we are connected biologically/chemically to all Earth's molecules, why our behavior is destructive ? I'm not quite sure if our consconsciousness is intrinsic... 🤔 That's a deep question! Given the ability of our DNA to alter and therefore produce subtle and not so subtle differences in the resulting human, doesn't it mean that the nature side of our psyche can be different also resulting in further change in the nurtured psyche. Not sure where the destructive aspect first showed itself or why. The gold rush would be a good example but there must be earlier examples. Greed is so destructive. It would be fascinating to find out.  @vicgrinberg one of my favorite things to say during Ash Wednesday..."we are all stardust, and to stardust we shall return." @vicgrinberg if I'm not mistaken the phrase "we are stardust" is from Sagan, but the one that first understood what made the stars shine was George Gamow. @vicgrinberg @MikeKaspari here is a good explanation for population 3 stars (the first stars that formed) - they themselves consisted of H + He mainly, but they did produce the first heavier elements! That said, given when the solar system was formed, the material most we are made off was processed at least one more time... @MikeKaspari Whoops, link did not copy - here it is: https://astronomy.swin.edu.au/cosmos/p/Population+III @vicgrinberg Thankyou. Unfortunately, today I've been a been a Brown Dwarf and totally lacking in fusion 🙄 @vicgrinberg Love this post and really love the chart. Everything that is, is a product of the cosmos. Everything is also finite something we need to learn. @vicgrinberg It's remarkable that when the periodic table of elements was being developed, places were left blank that fit the pattern with the assumption that some element belonged there that just hadn't been discovered yet.  @davidaugust plutonium-244 has a long enough half-life that we expect traces to be still present in the solar system! Not "useable" amounts in any way, though! @vicgrinberg really? Cool. What natural process makes it, but also keeps it undetected off earth? @vicgrinberg I thought a fair bit of beryliium was formed from Li₇ + H₂ -> Be₉ or Li₆ + H₃ -> Be₉ or is stellar Be just burned up in heavier fusion processes? @TheWerewolf the main berillyium isotope produced in stars is Be10 as an intermediate step towards C. The reactions you list are theoretically possible, but hardly ever happen in stars (low reaction rates) - thb, I'd need to look up whether they would produce energy at all. Where do you have them from? @vicgrinberg I did some art a while ago to show this visually with these facts in mind. We are literally children of the stars. The organic from the inorganic. Note: These images were generated by me in midjourmey and edited & retouched in photoshop. Read once, that at any given moment we have in our lungs a molecule of oxygen that George Washington breathed. Well that sounded pretty dandy! Then my brain popped up and said, "WELL, if thats true then it also means you have in your lungs a molecule of oxygen Hitler breathed." Not happy! Brain needs to shut up now and then! @blackops plutonium-244 has a long enough half-life that we expect traces to be still present in the solar system! Not "useable" amounts in any way, though! @vicgrinberg could it be that the energy that drives life comes from that black matter that we have heard about. @Guildford Do you mean "dark matter"? No. We do not yet know what dark matter is exactly, but we can constrain its properties pretty well - it's matter :) For the concept of energy, here is a rather good intro: https://www.khanacademy.org/science/hs-physics/x215e29cb31244fa1:introduction-to-energy/x215e29cb31244fa1:forms-of-energy/v/introduction-to-energy @vicgrinberg fab. How long has merging of neutron stars been recognised as basis for so many elements or indeed any elements? @richardwerskine "How long" is hard to answer where the scientific understanding is evolving! The most recent "aha" moment was the detection of neutron star-neutron mergers with LIGO. Theories for the origin has been around for a few decades ... @vicgrinberg thanks. I had some memory of belief in the periphery of a supernova (where shock wave hits) being candidate for heavier elements like gold. Did my memory fail me; and did the ‘aha’ moment kill that idea? @richardwerskine I'm not able to trace the history of how the ideas changed here - it's not just the aha moment, but also some theoretical problems with getting the reactions to actually occur in the supernova ejecta.   @vicgrinberg what I am hearing is that science normalized cannibalism, wait till the Republicans hear this, they are going to explode. @miller_klein I have to admit I am always a bit afraid of what chemists think of astronomers given how we call everything that is not H or He "metal" :blobsweats: @vicgrinberg I thought a white dwarf is the end for a solar mass star. Why would a white dwarf explode? Do you mean: ejected while the star collapsing into a white dwarf? @HaveyDeckAstro White dwarfs that are all alone out there will not explode. However, if the white dwarf grows beyond its maximum mass - when it accretes matter from a companion star - or if two white dwarfs collide, there will be an explosion. This is what supernovae type Ia are :) @vicgrinberg What ? Are you saying, that my beautiful girlfriend is made of nuclear waste ?? @vicgrinberg Reminds me when I was 16 or so... I once had a guy stand there telling me about some guy named Jesus and how we are made in his image, and also how he died for our sins, ect. Then I declined his response by saying that we are all made of star guts. I'm no longer allowed at that church. 😶   @vicgrinberg Except the GOP. They are just massive black holes. They’re made of the same stardust we are they’ve just made it into some thing dangerous and self serving. @vicgrinberg 13.7 billion years of things being what they are for all of us to be here in this present moment. It's such an unfathomable gift. I just wish we could appreciate and accept things as they are more often instead of expecting the universe to match our internal stuff. @vicgrinberg Hi, thanks, I've always been fascinated by those facts. Do you know any simple visual infography showing stars cycles and body elements ? @vicgrinberg Thank you Dr. Grinberg. This is great. I've been interested in astronomy since I was a child. I work in IT, but the wonder of all this never leaves you. @vicgrinberg I saw Ra marked as 'nothing left', and felt disappointed by the information here. I infer that this is only a fraction of the answer. I guess this is a perennial problem with outreach. The quick answer is usually incomplete.  @vicgrinberg Joni Mitchell meets Camille Paglia and they drink 2 bottles of Greek wine before running out of cigarettes @vicgrinberg thank you for this very nice explanation. This is what I really like at the #psychedelic #music and art. The artists had these knowledge from deep within. Seems like they feel it and they were right, also in the light of science, please enjoy „We are stardust, we are golden. We are billion year old carbon…“ @vicgrinberg Te puedo asegurar que somos mucho más que polvo de estrellas, «conciencia cósmica» quizás.... @vicgrinberg The gold ring on your finger?...... And possible slave labor (child workers in Africa, etc) https://study.soas.ac.uk/profits-exploitation-gold-mines-burkina-faso/ Gold is a social vanity project for the wealthy. Boost or not to show your true "Christmas" "spirit". @vicgrinberg It amazes me that stars pumped out so much of this stuff that even the paltry share that made it to Earth was millions of tons worth. @vicgrinberg and that Star light you wish upon ? Since it took light years to get here that Star is long dead by now just like your dreams and wishes  @vicgrinberg that is the absolute coolest chart of elements I've ever seen. And I might have been more interested in chemistry class if I'd learned this in the 80s! Thanks for this! It's fascinating @vicgrinberg |
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@vicgrinberg That is ONE cool graph!