The Alchemy of Neutron Star Collisions

The two neutron star merger that was the precursor to our heavy elements would have formed a black hole. I Wonder where it is now ?

My brain just exploded! Love this!

Good job five stars 🎉😮😊

Here is a possible (though unlikely) way to detect aliens. If alien civilizations are highly advanced, they may have figured out how to warp spacetime in order to travel between the stars. Since neutron star mergers are so rare, alien civilizations also might need a way to create more of them with higher yields of heavy elements (alien engineering materials). They would start by making relatively small gravitational adjustments to the orbits of neutron star pairs that are falling into a black hole. This allows directional control of the path of the neutron star that gets ejected into space at very high speed (the other is sacrificed to the black hole). The ejected star is then monitored and further steered into a glancing impact with another distant target neutron star. With much less gravitational potential energy lost to gravitational waves, the glancing impact will create a long thin string of debris with enough kinetic energy (and reduced gravity) to free most of the material in the two stars from gravitational capture, producing a very high yield of heavy elements. The powerful UNIQUE electromagnetic, gravitational and neutrino signals produced by these collisions should be detectable throughout the visible universe. The chance of a glancing high-speed collision happening by accident is so low that alien engineering is the much more likely explanation for the signal.

Su-per-noe-vee, not noe-vay.

a million years frm now this still won't matter.

I first read a speculation that the very heavy elements we know had to have resulted form a neutron star merger about 10 years ago in a physics journal. The conclusion was reached because of problems associated with r-capture of neutrons, the problem being that heavy nucleii building up simply decayed too rapidly at a couple of points for the capture to occur effectively. On reading that I visualized clumps of neutrons being flung off the colliding corpses and explosively degenerating into clumps of proton+neutron nucleii that we know and love. Also this explains where the immense energy contained in fissionable nucleii comes from.

So when we’re looking alien life, the area around neutron star collisions is a good place to look?

Does this mean that a typical solar system has much less of the heavier elements than ours? Is this the answer to the Fermi paradox?

Cool so it's like a transfer of states. Similar to gas to liquid or plasma to gas?

Does the fact that a neutron star merger happened within 1300 ly of us mean there is a black hole from that event still potentially nearby? How cool would it be if we could find it

Strange blank hole, given the singularity?

dude i have that same shirt lol, got it from the kennedy space center a couple years ago

Neutron Star Collisions are far rarer then Supper Nova. Earths magnetic field is possible do to the radioactive decay of heavy elements in the core. So could it be that the answer to the Fermi Paradox is the absence of radioactive elements in the cores of planets.

Gold is made in neutron star collision 😊

Muhjuh

Don't you mean H atoms per cubic metre?

Would you consider doing a video on the s-process? I understand that the s-process has also contributed significantly to the periodic table, and I'm curious how these elements trapped in stars were able to escape to our solar system.

Neutron stars are one of the most fascinating objects in the Universe. IMO much more fascinating than Black holes. Especially since everyone studies Black holes. Neutron star collisions may be responsible for most of the Phosphorous in the Universe. Along will many other heavy elements. Phosphorous is critical to cell energy production. Without which, higher forms of life would not be possible. Some areas of the Universe, like our area, have Phosphorous. Many do not. The recently observed Neutron Star collision created gold and platinum equivalent to the mass of 300 Earths.

Just for the record, the article was written by Imre Bartos (Imre is first name) and Szabolcs Marka(Szabolcs is the first name), 2 Hungarians.

Love the minecraft T shirt

the intro song needs updating its so goofy and anticlimactic contrasted to the spaced out background music

How does studying space not make you go insane. The part about the meteorite alone is just !!!!!!!!!

If an "island of stability" of super-heavy elements actually exists, wouldn't spectra of these super-heavy elements be seen in the aftermath of a neutron star collision?

I would expect that at some point during a merger, the neutron star pair could act as a single rapidly spinning magnetar. For a few seconds, the enormous rotating magnetic field might be even more effective at catapulting heavy elements into space than the neutrino wave. Any ideas (or calculations) on that?

i love that t-shirt, i used to have one

If we need such a close neutron star merger to explain the heavy elements, then doesn't that mean there should be planets with practically no gold or other heavy elements?

hello, is it posible for a black hole to "implode" and generate matter? posibly making the same efect of creating heavy elements? thanks for the interesting explanation

Hey Mate, where do you think the black hole from "the merger" is now?

There must be a region with a radius on the order of 1k ly which we are near the edge of and has a high concentration of heavy elements. The heavy elements should be found in the planets of star systems in this region. The black hole formed by the merger of neutron stars must have sunk somewhat towards the galactic center, pulling some of the star systems behind it. There must be a quite predictable shape to this region, and astrophysicists might find a way to learn precisely where our star system is within it.

Considering your review of the Nature Magasine Article of
Imre Bartos and Szabolcs Marka, an obvious queston

remains unanswered. WHY IS THE SUN COMPOSED OF
PREDOMINANTLY LIGHT ELEMENTS in contrast with all
orbiting planets and metheorites that are being a subject
of the prooves provided in thearticle?

So now we have to also account for neutron stars colliding to find life elsewhere?

Fascinating! ...but I heard this nearly 30 years ago from Bob Lazaar, just before he was officially debunked. (He claimed to know that aliens had no interest in our solar system because it did not have enough super-heavy elements from neutron star collisions.) Maybe some of you competent scientists might take another look at some of his other claims and tell us which ones aren't nuts?

Always liked pbs even when I was a child .

Recombination is correct term

Thanks for the information ❤️

No other life because Earth is an iodine GLUTTON

Great explanation, fantastic work! Thanks a lot!!!

your loving cops

So basically i am 29 + over 1.4 billion years old? G! I think it's time to leave my parents house haha

Please stop adding background music or noise effects. It's distracting irritating & needless. Very silly.
Your vids are lessons or lectures. Would you expect a lecturer in a lecture room to put background music on the moment they spoke 🤔
I imagine not.
So whats the difference.
Can't get my head around why you think music's needed 🤔

I’ve watched this episode a lot never gets old!

Wait a minute! Now I'm scared. I means, that there is a black whole 650 to 1300 ly away! or maybe closer. It had a lot of time to move!

That's such a fire shirt

Can we create of map of where stars/galaxies actually are instead of where we see them?
I mean if we see light from billions of years ago then they are obviously not where they appear to be.