August 15, 2016 Monday
Today father and I met our IO Inspector Deshmukh.
Bedtime Story
The question that behooves us is this; why is iron so abundant on planet earth?
As I had emphasized earlier, the mid range elements starting from carbon, Z (atomic number) = 6 and ending with iron Z = 26 were and are being produced in stars.
The technical term being stellar nucleosynthesis.
To understand and explain this supposedly innocuous sounding question of the abundance of iron takes us to the very heart of both nuclear physics and cosmology;
the sciences of the most smallest and the largest at the very same time.
Nucleosynthesis is a fundamental process that creates new atomic nuclei from already existing protons and neutrons.
The most primordial protons and neutrons themselves formed from the quark-gluon plasma (QGP) or the quark soup during the Big Bang as it cooled below 2 trillion degree Centigrade.
Now of course you will think I am talking nonsense or something that is only a theory or something that comes out straight from African tribal religious stories.
Well...
It is not as bad as all that.
First of all, QGP can be created by heating matter up to a temperature of 2 X 1012 Kelvin
(the temperature at the edge of our sun's cote is 10 million Kelvin which is 107 Kelvin).
This can be accomplished by colliding 2 large nuclei at high energy.
Experiments at CERN first tried to create this QGP in the 1980s and 1990s.
The LHC at CERN are continuing these experiments and have tentatively claimed to have created QGP at a temperature close to 4 X 1012 Kelvin.
Besides this, there are several other experimental observations (beside theoretical computations) that confirm their existence now and then...
At the moment of creation.
These are heady topics and we need to go slowly.
We will also need to look at the contributions made by the likes of Arthur Eddington (a villain in the story of Subramanyan Chandrasekhar) and Hans Bethe in this story of stars and stellar nucleosynthesis.
Stay tuned to the voice of an average storytelling chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.in/
Good night mon ami and my fellow cousin ape.
Today father and I met our IO Inspector Deshmukh.
Bedtime Story
The question that behooves us is this; why is iron so abundant on planet earth?
As I had emphasized earlier, the mid range elements starting from carbon, Z (atomic number) = 6 and ending with iron Z = 26 were and are being produced in stars.
The technical term being stellar nucleosynthesis.
To understand and explain this supposedly innocuous sounding question of the abundance of iron takes us to the very heart of both nuclear physics and cosmology;
the sciences of the most smallest and the largest at the very same time.
Nucleosynthesis is a fundamental process that creates new atomic nuclei from already existing protons and neutrons.
The most primordial protons and neutrons themselves formed from the quark-gluon plasma (QGP) or the quark soup during the Big Bang as it cooled below 2 trillion degree Centigrade.
Now of course you will think I am talking nonsense or something that is only a theory or something that comes out straight from African tribal religious stories.
Well...
It is not as bad as all that.
First of all, QGP can be created by heating matter up to a temperature of 2 X 1012 Kelvin
(the temperature at the edge of our sun's cote is 10 million Kelvin which is 107 Kelvin).
This can be accomplished by colliding 2 large nuclei at high energy.
Experiments at CERN first tried to create this QGP in the 1980s and 1990s.
The LHC at CERN are continuing these experiments and have tentatively claimed to have created QGP at a temperature close to 4 X 1012 Kelvin.
Besides this, there are several other experimental observations (beside theoretical computations) that confirm their existence now and then...
At the moment of creation.
These are heady topics and we need to go slowly.
We will also need to look at the contributions made by the likes of Arthur Eddington (a villain in the story of Subramanyan Chandrasekhar) and Hans Bethe in this story of stars and stellar nucleosynthesis.
Stay tuned to the voice of an average storytelling chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.in/
Good night mon ami and my fellow cousin ape.
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