EEVblog Electronics Community Forum
General => General Technical Chat => Topic started by: TerraHertz on October 27, 2019, 12:15:34 pm
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What would we do without gold, and all those pretty color, reliable gold-plated connector pins? Upon which our technology depends even more than it does on money.
Well here's an article on how the gold in our interstellar neighborhood was formed. Previously I'd thought gold was formed along with other heavy elements in garden-variety novas and supernovas. But no...
https://www.space.com/neutron-star-crash-made-gold-uranium.html (https://www.space.com/neutron-star-crash-made-gold-uranium.html)
Ancient Neutron-Star Crash Made Enough Gold and Uranium to Fill Earth's Oceans
These guys say they have identified the ONE event that made almost all our gold. Also when, and it wasn't nice.
Assuming that the universe actually does have fairly common life-bearing planets, then that one gamma ray burst probably obliterated hundreds or thousands of living planets.
Gold. It's costly stuff.
On a lighter note, here's another article attempting to report on the same thing. Except the writer is seriously struggling with the astrophyical concepts. Did you know stars have 'length'? That title...
https://www.naturalnews.com/2019-10-26-gold-heavy-elements-formation-neutron-stars-collision.html (https://www.naturalnews.com/2019-10-26-gold-heavy-elements-formation-neutron-stars-collision.html)
Gold and elements heavier than iron were formed on Earth after neutron stars collided billions of years ago: Study
Oh well, she tried.
PS. Now I hate gold scrappers even more.
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Can't get much darker than this:
https://youtu.be/GZ7IT0O9-7I
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TerraHertz....
I for one, always have a 'devil' of a time when trying to convince 'laypersons', as well as the
reasonably educated, that the vast majority of 'Elements' have originated from old star systems.
Some people think it 'belittles' us, but I think it is absolutely fantastic that a large part of our own
human bodies consists of such remnants of prior Super-Novas etc.... 8)
I guess what I'm daring 'not' to say... is our 'Universe' holds greater secrets/facts than any Deity...
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[...]
We are stardust.
We are golden.
And we've got to get ourselves back to the garden.
[...]
--Joni Mitchell, 1970
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Well, considering 99.9% of the known visible matter in the universe is hydrogen, with a trace of Helium, and a trifling trace of "everything else", we are all basically the result of dead stars from the past.
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How is that news?
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To be fair, the 'garden variety supernova' puts out a lot of nasty as well. Probably not as bad, but still.