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An illustration of a gamma -ray outbreak. | Credit: NASA, ESA and M. Kornmesser
Gammastray bursts, which are best known in the cosmos, can help deliver a piece of the puzzle when it comes to one of the most challenging open problems in the entire physics, how are the heaviest elements in the universe fake.
The results of a new study indicate that extraordinarily strong light from gamma rays could help create these elements from the outer mussels of dying stars.
So far, research has proposed that the formation of the heaviest elements such as gold requires plenty of neutrons that can absorb the atomic nuclei in order to grow bigger. For this reason, “the scientists assumed that heavy elements were only created in places where neutrons already existed in large quantities,” Matthew Mumpower, a physicist of the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, told Space.com.
Usually, neutrons are bound within atomic nucleus or the matter that make up extremely strong stars called neutron stars. Core reactions such as split or fusion can free the bonds to generate heavy elements – but “free neutrons usually fall within around 15 minutes,” said Mumpower. This limits the number of potential situations in which free neutrons are available in frequency that is required to form heavy elements only for some rare scenarios. One of these scenarios is the catastrophic association of two neutron stars.
“I have studied the origin of the heavy elements for 20 years,” said Mumpower. “It keeps me addicted because there are so many unknown people, which makes one of the most difficult problems in all physics.”
Now Mumpower and his colleagues are proposing a new path to forge heavy elements. Strong photons or light particles of gamma rays can help generate neutrons, they say.
“If you have energetic photons, they produce neutrons and if you have neutrons, you can create heavy elements,” said Mumpower.
This new scenario provides a massive star that dies when its fuel runs. Without the energy required to counteract the pressure of its own immense gravity, the core of the star collapses to form a black hole. This catastrophic death can start incredibly strong radiation impulses.
Stars rotate, including our sun, and when a black hole that turns quickly enough from a dying star is generated quickly enough, it can start a powerful beam and create high -energy photons deep in the jet. This jet hits the outer shell of the dying star and creates a hot cocoon with material. With this hot cocoon, the researchers suggest that the high -energy photons of the jet can interact with nuclear cores and that protons can convert into the neutrons of the size of a nanosecond. The energetic photons can also break out atomic nuclei, says the team and creates free neutrons. All of these neutrons can help forge heavy elements.
“The inspiration for this specific study came from discussions with my children,” said Mumpower. “They love to see slow motion on YouTube, and one evening during the pandemic we saw an incredible clip of a freight train through a huge pile of snow. The snow did not disappear simply and comprised the train.”
“What if this train represents an astrophysical jet that was filled with energetic photons and the snow depicted a star, the sprinkled away and produces a hot material cocoon that can create neutrons?” Mumpower remembered that he thought. “This analogy became my aha moment and started this research.”
This newly discovered mechanism could help to strange earlier knowledge such as certain radioactive materials such as Iron-60 and Plutonium-244 appear together in the depth sediments of the earth. Previous works indicated to an extraterrestrial origin for these substances, but neutron star fusions, one of the leading known mechanisms for the formation of severe element, these materials cannot easily take into account.
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These results can also help to explain them Recent discovery From a Kilonova a glow made of visible and infrared light-associated with long gamma rays. Previous examinations have mainly connected Kilonovas to the collision of two neutron stars or the merger of a neutron star and a black hole and non -collapsing stars.
Mumpower hopes that future observations will provide clear evidence of the team’s new results. For example, a number of telescopes that can recognize light, neutrinos and gravitational waves could pursue the way a collapsing star can create a gamma-ram burst and kilonova. “This information would provide us with the proposed physical mechanism of smoking,” he says.
The scientists detailed their results Online March 20th in the Astrophysical Journal.
