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Astronomy and Cosmology
Astronomy and Astrophysics
There's Gold in Them Neutron Stars - or - Maybe Not
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[QUOTE="ORF, post: 6396474, member: 528012"] Hi, there are issues difficult to understand and explain in both sources. It is claimed that Neutron Star Mergers (NSM) are not the main source of r-process elements because of timing: there are r-process abundance pattern in metal-poor stars in the galactic halo, which are up to 12Gyears old. That means that there was a heavy element source already working between the Big Bang and the moment of formation of those stars. In principle, stars would need more than that to evolve to a neutron star and then collide. The other problem with NSM is the ejection mechanisms: it is not clear that the amount of ejected material is enough to explain everything. On the other hand, supernova and core-collapse supernova may not reach the conditions to form heavy nuclei by neutron capture (ie, there are not enough neutrons). The current treatment of neutrino in simulations is very simplistic. These neutrinos decrease the neutron density (which is much lower than in NSM) and prevents the formation of the heaviest elements. Only under extreme conditions of high rotation speed and very intense magnetic fields (up to 1e10 - 1e12 T) in very massive stars it is possible to achieve a full r-process in a simulation. The problem here is the number of observations which support the existence of such massive stars... As far as I know, all of these just rely on simulations. These are astrophysical sites where r-process may take place. But there are other processes which can synthesize heavy elements, like p-process or s-process. The problem with s-process is that we can not measure at laboratory the reaction rates (the probability of capturing a neutron) for energies which are found in stars. So, one has to invent a model and extrapolate... so, this may be another uncertainty source, which is usually disregarded. In addition, Galactic Chemical Evolution (GCE) models rely on theoretical/simulated yields which introduce a huge uncertainty, and GCE conclusions may be misleading. Sorry this post increase the uncertainty instead of answering the OP Regards, ORF PS: this meme summarizes this post [URL]https://media.makeameme.org/created/uncertainty-uncertainty-everywhere.jpg[/URL] [/QUOTE]
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There's Gold in Them Neutron Stars - or - Maybe Not
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