How are elements such as gold created and why can’t humans creat
In: Chemistry
Stars.
Stars are so big thay they can press hydrogen atoms together to make helium. If they are still big enough, they can push a hydrogen and helium atom together to make lithium, and so on and so forth.
This fusion reaction sends out a ton of energy, pushing out the outer layers of the star.
This works until you get to iron. Iron takes more energy to fuse together than it outputs, so as soon as a star starts fusing iron, it’s energy output drops dramatically. Since it’s energy output drops, the other layers of the star are no longer being pushed out, so they suddenly collapse and slam into the star’s core. This collapse is what we call a supernova. This slam happens with so much energy that it’s able to make all the elements above iron up to uranium (possibly neptunium and plutonium, but no isotopes that last long enough for us to find them in nature).
After this supernova, all those elements are scattered, and that is what eventually formed the Earth and our solar system.
We can make very small amounts of elements (any element) ourselves by slamming subatomic particles together, this is how we made all the elements up to 118, but we can only make very small amounts of each, and it is incredibly expensive to do so.
Latest Answers