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Neutron star collisions are a “goldmine” of heavy elements, study finds
Neutron star collisions are a “goldmine” of heavy elements, study finds
Mergers between two neutron stars have produced more heavy elements in last 2.5 billion years than mergers between neutron stars and black holes.
Jennifer Chu<br>MIT News Office
Publication Date:
October 25, 2021
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New research suggests binary neutron stars are a likely cosmic source for the gold, platinum, and other heavy metals we see today.
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Credit: National Science Foundation/LIGO/Sonoma State University/A. Simonnet, edited by MIT News
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Caption:
New research suggests binary neutron stars are a likely cosmic source for the gold, platinum, and other heavy metals we see today.
Credits:
Credit: National Science Foundation/LIGO/Sonoma State University/A. Simonnet, edited by MIT News
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Most elements lighter than iron are forged in the cores of stars. A star’s white-hot center fuels the fusion of protons, squeezing them together to build progressively heavier elements. But beyond iron, scientists have puzzled over what could give rise to gold, platinum, and the rest of the universe’s heavy elements, whose formation requires more energy than a star can muster.
A new study by researchers at MIT and the University of New Hampshire finds that of two long-suspected sources of heavy metals, one is more of a goldmine than the other.
The study, published today in Astrophysical Journal Letters, reports that in the last 2.5 billion years, more heavy metals were produced in binary neutron star mergers, or collisions between two neutron stars, than in mergers between a neutron star and a black hole.
The study is the first to compare the two merger types in terms of their heavy metal output, and suggests that binary neutron stars are a likely cosmic source for the gold, platinum, and other heavy metals we see today. The findings could also help scientists determine the rate at which heavy metals are produced across the universe.
“What we find exciting about our result is that to some level of confidence we can say binary neutron stars are probably more of a goldmine than neutron star-black hole mergers,” says lead author Hsin-Yu Chen, a postdoc in MIT’s Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research.
Chen’s co-authors are Salvatore Vitale, assistant professor of physics at MIT, and Francois Foucart of UNH.
An efficient flash
As stars undergo nuclear fusion, they require energy to fuse protons to form heavier elements. Stars are efficient in churning out lighter elements, from hydrogen to iron. Fusing more than the 26 protons in iron, however, becomes energetically inefficient.
“If you want to go past iron and build heavier elements like gold and platinum, you need some other way to throw protons together,” Vitale says.
Scientists have suspected supernovae might be an answer. When a massive star collapses in a supernova, the iron at its center could conceivably combine with lighter elements in the extreme fallout to generate heavier elements.
In 2017, however, a promising candidate was confirmed, in the form a binary neutron star merger, detected for the first time by LIGO and Virgo, the gravitational-wave observatories in the United States and in Italy, respectively. The detectors picked...