How are elements such as gold created and why can’t humans creat
In: Chemistry
Originally? I think everything heavier than iron is made in supernova.
Naturally occurring gold is made in supernovas.
Technically, humans can make gold, by using a particle accelerator to smash nuclei together. Same method that’s used to create new superheavy elements. This is considerably more expensive than just mining it.
Gold and almost all other heavy elements on earth were created in stars (or more exactly probably in the explosion at the end of life of a star) out of lighter elements.
Basically you can combine two light atoms to create a new heavier one. For example our sun puts two hydrogen atoms together to form helium, and you even get energy from it, what makes our sun so hot and glowing.
Similar things work to create heavier atoms like gold, but that require energy instead of releasing energy.
We can do this conversion of one element into another ourselves on earth using nuclear reactors or particle accelerators. We could even convert lead to gold. However that requires so much energy and is so expensive that it is not worth it, as any gold created like this would be more expensive than any gold we can find naturally.
Therefore we only use this to make atoms which don’t occur naturally (as they are radioactive and unstable). These can be special variants of natural occuring elements or even new elements which don’t exist on earth naturally at all.
The creation of elements happen in a couple primary ways. Hydrogen, the lightest element, is primarily primordial having come directly from the big bang. helium and trace other elements were also from the big bang. These elements came together to form the earliest stars. These stars perform nuclear fusion at their core, combining light elements into heavier elements through intense heat and pressure. When these stars end their lives, they release their outer shell in a supernova, releasing these heavier elements. The larger the star, the heavier the elements they are capable of fusing. Some amount of elements are the result of nuclear decay, with very heavy elements going through a decay chain of other elements.
We CAN make elements through a few different ways. Nuclear fission, the splitting of an atom takes a heavy atom like uranium and splits it into smaller elements. We do this regularly in power plants to generate electricity. Additionally we can make larger elements by bombarding heavy elements with lighter ones. Plutonium and higher on the periodic table are man made and appear rarely if ever in nature. The issue with making elements like gold is that it is SIGNIFICANTLY cheaper to just mine it. The energy requirements are intense, and the yields would be small. We are also still not fully able to emulate the fusion process a star performs in a manner that is energy positive.
Mostly a [heart of a star going nova.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemical_element#Origin_of_the_elements). The energy levels and pressure in the explosion of a star rams together smaller elements.
Hydrogen forms naturally from the big bang cooling. Some smaller elements will form from cosmic rays smacking hyrodgen together.
The nominal day to day pressure will fuse elements up to iron, which settle down into the core and don’t fuse any higher and generally don’t get any more dense. Once the fuel of hydrogen runs out and the fusion that keeps everything in a bubbling burbling turmoil slacks off, the gravity crushes everything together so much that the sun explodes.
Really big elements need a super-nova crushing them together and they fall apart given enough time.
Humans CAN create gold by smacking smaller elements together or splitting apart larger elements. We have no-joke achieved transmutation. But the amounts we can make in a collider are very very small and not worth the effort. Still, it’d be really cool to have a flake of transmuted gold.
You are discussing aerospace engineer jobs in your other posts and asked this question? Your account has probably been hacked
We do not produce elements. They are fundamental products of the creation of the universe. We could artificially produce it from other events.
Gold is an element. An element is define by the number of protons in the center of the nucleus.
To “create” an element we would need to start with some other element and either add or remove protons from the nucleus.
The process of adding protons is called fusion. That is how fusion reactors work. We have done this with isotopes of simple light elements hydrogen is one.
The amounts of energy and technology involved are substantial and not risk free. There is no economic model that makes production of gold desirable. So we don’t bother.
Too add to what others have noted, re: supernovas. Gold is also created in neutron star mergers. Garden-variety nuclear fusion is no good once you get to iron, as the reaction to fuse elements heavier than that requires more energy that it releases. You need absolutely immense sources of energy to create these heavier, and you need these types of events to create that much energy.
Fusion. Every solid thing in the universe was created by lighter atoms of gas collecting into clouds. The gravity of the atoms gather them together until a star is formed. The pressure and energy of all that stuff force smaller atoms to bond together into larger heavier ones.
Eventually that shift from light elements to heavy ones unbalances the reactions of the star and it explodes outward, flinging those now fused elements out in a cloud of dust and leftover gas. That dust and gas gathers together bit by bit until eventually a planet is formed. Sometimes the remaining gas can form a new smaller star.
Some big, fat stars go boom when they grow old. In the explosion the gas they’re made of transforms into all kinds of stuff, like carbon, oxygen and even gold, and is spread through the universe. Billions of years later that stuff becomes othe, snaller stars, plants, animals and even you.
Yes, you. You and me are made of star stuff.
All elements other than hydrogen are generally created in stars.
normal Nuclear Fusion in the core of stars creates a variety up elements up to Iron in the periodic table. Once a star tries to fuse iron, it collapses and explodes, throwing off layers of material to form a white dwarf, or exploding in a supernova and creating a neutron star(or a black hole, but thats not relevant here). Its during the death throes of these stars or the collisions of neutron stars that more and more neutron and protons are added to already large elements, and the ejected material is released into space where planets may slowly accumulate it as they form.
While humans have been working with fusion and neutron bombardment, we don’t really have a good grasp on the technology yet, because trying to replicate the interior of a star just to fuse hydrogen into helium is hard enough, its even harder trying to create something like gold where the nucleus is huge, not to mention ludicrously expensive. We are far more likely to turn to reliable asteroid mining before we actually start creating gold or other heavy elements.
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