{"id":212410,"date":"2025-04-25T13:05:57","date_gmt":"2025-04-25T18:05:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/04\/new-framework-suggests-stars-dissolve-into-neutrons-to-forge-heavy-elements"},"modified":"2025-04-25T13:05:57","modified_gmt":"2025-04-25T18:05:57","slug":"new-framework-suggests-stars-dissolve-into-neutrons-to-forge-heavy-elements","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/04\/new-framework-suggests-stars-dissolve-into-neutrons-to-forge-heavy-elements","title":{"rendered":"New framework suggests stars dissolve into neutrons to forge heavy elements"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/new-framework-suggests-stars-dissolve-into-neutrons-to-forge-heavy-elements.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Understanding the origin of heavy elements on the periodic table is one of the most challenging open problems in all of physics. In the search for conditions suitable for these elements via \u201cnucleosynthesis,\u201d a Los Alamos National Laboratory-led team is going where no researchers have gone before: the gamma-ray burst jet and surrounding cocoon emerging from collapsed stars.<\/p>\n<p>As proposed in an <a href=\"https:\/\/iopscience.iop.org\/article\/10.3847\/1538-4357\/adb1e3\" target=\"_blank\">article<\/a> in <i>The Astrophysical Journal<\/i>, <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/high+energy\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">high-energy<\/a> photons produced deep in the jet could dissolve the outer layers of a star into neutrons, causing a series of physical processes that result in the formation of heavy elements.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe creation of heavy elements such as uranium and plutonium necessitates extreme conditions,\u201d said Matthew Mumpower, physicist at Los Alamos. \u201cThere are only a few viable yet rare scenarios in the cosmos where these elements can form, and all such locations need a copious amount of neutrons. We propose a new phenomenon where those neutrons don\u2019t pre-exist but are produced dynamically in the star.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Understanding the origin of heavy elements on the periodic table is one of the most challenging open problems in all of physics. In the search for conditions suitable for these elements via \u201cnucleosynthesis,\u201d a Los Alamos National Laboratory-led team is going where no researchers have gone before: the gamma-ray burst jet and surrounding cocoon emerging [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":732,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,1497,219],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-212410","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chemistry","category-energy","category-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212410","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/732"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=212410"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212410\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=212410"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=212410"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=212410"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}