APOD: Where Your Elements Came From (2023 Jan 08)

[APOD Robot]

Where Your Elements Came From

Explanation: The hydrogen in your body, present in every molecule of water, came from the Big Bang. There are no other appreciable sources of hydrogen in the universe. The carbon in your body was made by nuclear fusion in the interior of stars, as was the oxygen. Much of the iron in your body was made during supernovas of stars that occurred long ago and far away. The gold in your jewelry was likely made from neutron stars during collisions that may have been visible as short-duration gamma-ray bursts or gravitational wave events. Elements like phosphorus and copper are present in our bodies in only small amounts but are essential to the functioning of all known life. The featured periodic table is color coded to indicate humanity's best guess as to the nuclear origin of all known elements. The sites of nuclear creation of some elements, such as copper, are not really well known and are continuing topics of observational and computational research.

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[jagganath69]

What does the BROWN shade mean (Polonium et al) ?

[Iksarfighter]

Same question

[Knight of Clear Skies]

What does the BROWN shade mean (Polonium et al) ?

These are all elements with very short half-lives, so they barely exist in nature.

[Uwe Dortmund]

Thanks for the knowledge!
Well, how old is 'water' then?
Up to now i thought as old as the universe, which seems to be not quite accurate.

[rwlott]

Well, how old is 'water' then?
Up to now i thought as old as the universe, which seems to be not quite accurate.

If Neufer was still with us, Chris would probably quip that water is about as old as Neufer, given that there were only five elements in the Periodic Table back when Art was in high school. Art would then correct him and say there were actually six elements back then and then conclude with some quote from Lord of the Rings that would leave us all scratching our heads. Art Neuendorffer, I sure do miss you.

[Sa Ji Tario]

What does the BROWN shade mean (Polonium et al) ?

Tc = Technetium meaning "artificial", created by humans in laboratory reactors, and the other browns

[Chris Peterson]

Well, how old is 'water' then?
Up to now i thought as old as the universe, which seems to be not quite accurate.

If Neufer was still with us, Chris would probably quip that water is about as old as Neufer, given that there were only five elements in the Periodic Table back when Art was in high school. Art would then correct him and say there were actually six elements back then and then conclude with some quote from Lord of the Rings that would leave us all scratching our heads. Art Neufendorf, I sure do miss you.

Four. Earth, air, fire, and water. And the quip would have been Shakespearean, along with the suggestion that Shakespeare didn't write it. But otherwise... yeah.

Hydrogen has been around since the beginning. Oxygen didn't come about until the first generation of stars. And water? Well, it need not be ancient at all.

[Greyhound99]

What does the BROWN shade mean (Polonium et al) ?

These are all elements with very short half-lives, so they barely exist in nature.

That is undoubtedly true, but not an answer to "what does the brown shade mean". I am not a real physicist, but I think by elimination it must mean that the source of these elements is radioactive decay from heavier elements.

[Chris Peterson]

What does the BROWN shade mean (Polonium et al) ?

These are all elements with very short half-lives, so they barely exist in nature.

That is undoubtedly true, but not an answer to "what does the brown shade mean". I am not a real physicist, but I think by elimination it must mean that the source of these elements is radioactive decay from heavier elements.

If you look at the referenced source data, the elements shaded brown here (gray in the source) are labeled "Very radioactive isotopes; nothing left from stars". For whatever reason that label was left off the APOD version.

So yes, what this means is that these elements are either not found in nature at all, or are short-lived products of the radioactive decay of other elements.

[Cousin Ricky]

There is a more up-to-date image at Wikimedia Commons. For brown, it says “Human synthesis/ no stable isotopes”; however, many of the brown elements in today’s APOD (polonium et al.) do occur in nature in stable quantities, due to radioactive decay chains. These are colored purple in the latest Wikimedia image.

[Ann]

There is a more up-to-date image at Wikimedia Commons. For brown, it says “Human synthesis/ no stable isotopes”; however, many of the brown elements in today’s APOD (polonium et al.) do occur in nature in stable quantities, due to radioactive decay chains. These are colored purple in the latest Wikimedia image.

Thanks for the info, Cousin Ricky!

Ann

[Fred the Cat]

Cosmic ray spallation is listed as sources of beryllium and boron but lithium is also referred to in some articles.

Thinking big, could we someday make these in a lab? How could we test if lithium could be artificially produced to increase our supply Or might that take three infinities(888)?

[Chris Peterson]

Cosmic ray spallation is listed as sources of beryllium and boron but lithium is also referred to in some articles.

Thinking big, could we someday make these in a lab? How could we test if lithium could be artificially produced to increase our supply :?: Or might that take three infinities(888)? :wink:

We can make lithium in the lab. Just not economically in industrial quantities. This is true for most elements.

[orin stepanek]

I want to see Happy people dancing on Mars & the Moon!

[GuiltyCol]

Didn't understand this in the commentary:

The gold in your jewelry was likely made from neutron stars during collisions

How did that gold get out of the neutron stars? I thought that merging neutron stars create either another bigger neutron star, or a black hole.

Or is some % of their combined mass ejected in the merger?

[Chris Peterson]

Didn't understand this in the commentary:

The gold in your jewelry was likely made from neutron stars during collisions

How did that gold get out of the neutron stars? I thought that merging neutron stars create either another bigger neutron star, or a black hole.

Or is some % of their combined mass ejected in the merger?

Indeed, a great deal of material can be released during the collision of a pair of neutron stars. And being neutron rich, and suddenly unconfined, that provides an ideal environment for the production of heavy elements via the r-process.

[Uwe Dortmund]

Didn't see that coming. Har har. Well, thank you again
Indeed it completely escaped me that water is not an element itself but a compound (just looked it up). Did it?
Whatever. Any non BS answer, please?

[MarkBour]

Well, how old is 'water' then?
Up to now i thought as old as the universe, which seems to be not quite accurate.

If Neufer was still with us, Chris would probably quip that water is about as old as Neufer, given that there were only five elements in the Periodic Table back when Art was in high school. Art would then correct him and say there were actually six elements back then and then conclude with some quote from Lord of the Rings that would leave us all scratching our heads. Art Neuendorffer, I sure do miss you.

In one sense, water molecules on Earth are very young. If you consider that a water molecule is two hydrogen atoms bound to an oxygen atom, then one thing they do a lot when in a body of liquid water on Earth is to self-ionize at the rate of one out of 10^14 molecules at any one instant. Geissler et al estimated that this means that the average water molecule has broken up and reformed (with new "dance partners") every 10 hours.
http://geisslergroup.org/wp-content/upl ... 001-1.pdf

[zendae]

Related, and fun:

https://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/ ... torial.jpg

[Ann]

Well, how old is 'water' then?
Up to now i thought as old as the universe, which seems to be not quite accurate.

If Neufer was still with us, Chris would probably quip that water is about as old as Neufer, given that there were only five elements in the Periodic Table back when Art was in high school. Art would then correct him and say there were actually six elements back then and then conclude with some quote from Lord of the Rings that would leave us all scratching our heads. Art Neuendorffer, I sure do miss you.

Thank you for reminding Starship Asterisk* about Neufer and giving him this fine tribute. I feel his absence too.

Ann

[GuiltyCol]

Didn't understand this in the commentary:

The gold in your jewelry was likely made from neutron stars during collisions

How did that gold get out of the neutron stars? I thought that merging neutron stars create either another bigger neutron star, or a black hole.

Or is some % of their combined mass ejected in the merger?

Indeed, a great deal of material can be released during the collision of a pair of neutron stars. And being neutron rich, and suddenly unconfined, that provides an ideal environment for the production of heavy elements via the r-process.

Thanks Chris.

[johnnydeep]

Related, and fun:

https://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/ ... torial.jpg

The most detailed periodic table I've yet found is the one from https://www.vertex42.com/ExcelTemplates ... ments.html. There are both PDF and Excel format versions. Here's the color PDF - https://www.vertex42.com/Files/pdfs/2/p ... _color.pdf. And here's a jpg (I reduced the quality a bit to get it under 1 MB in size):

From https://www.vertex42.com/ExcelTemplates/periodic-table-of-elements.html

EDIT: hmm, someone should take it upon themselves to integrate the info about the percentages of each element coming from different sources from this APOD with the Vertex42 periodic table. I think it could be done, but getting BOTH color codings into each element square would be tricky.

[bystander]

Related, and fun:

https://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/ ... torial.jpg

The most detailed periodic table I've yet found is the one from https://www.vertex42.com/ExcelTemplates ... ments.html.
...

My go to periodic table online is at Ptable. It has the information in your table by highlighting different properties on the left. It also has links to the wikipedia article on each element.

[johnnydeep]

Related, and fun:

https://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/ ... torial.jpg

The most detailed periodic table I've yet found is the one from https://www.vertex42.com/ExcelTemplates ... ments.html.
...

My go to periodic table online is at Ptable. It has the information in your table by highlighting different properties on the left. It also has links to the wikipedia article on each element.

Thanks! Yes, the Ptable version is indeed wonderful and certainly more comprehensive! I had actually come across it before but had forgotten how truly awesome it was. Still, the one from Vertex42 is still, I think, the most impressive and detailed static image version of the periodic table. At least, of those I've seen so far.