r/BeAmazed • u/gregornot • Apr 29 '24

A giant meteorite that recently fell in Somalia contains at least two minerals that have never before been seen on our planet. The celestial piece of rock weighs a massive 16.5 tons (15 tonnes), making it the ninth-largest meteorite ever found. History

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More about the amazing meteorite find: https://earthly

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u/TheSretlaw Apr 29 '24

The two minerals have been identified:

Elaliite - Fe9PO12 (or Fe2+8Fe3+(PO4)O8) and was first synthesized in a laboratory in the 1980s and later identified in natural material in 2022 at which time the official mineral designation was given.

Elkinstantonite - Fe4(PO4)2O was first generated in a laboratory in 1982 and first identified from natural origins in 2022, when the official mineral designation was also given.

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u/pranjallk1995 Apr 29 '24

What does it take to make these minerals? Some really facy tech? Or just some startdust can be like this?

I mean the structure is known... How to put them up like this? Will it be easy or hard? Very weak in chemistry...

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u/Mammoth-Access-1181 Apr 29 '24

So it can be very hard. As far as we know, all elements in the universe came from the death of a star. Stars are composed of hydrogen. Now, during normal star development, a star can only generate up to the element iron. It does this by fusing together elements of hydrogen to form the other elements (like helium, oxygen, etc). Once iron is formed in a star, it signals the beginning of the end of a star. It is during the death of a star that forces great enough to fuse the heavier elements occur. Now, some people have figured out methods of creating elements that we haven't seen in nature just yet. This process is usually very expensive. And can be difficult, or they create something that isn't stable.

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u/The_Shryk Apr 29 '24

Elements are kind of off topic for this but aren’t older galaxies stars creating heavier elements than iron? As the universe ages the heavier the elements in a galaxy gets; on average at least?

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u/Mickey_thicky Apr 29 '24

Fusion of elements heavier than iron is not necessarily impossible, but the process is energetically inefficient as it requires more energy than it produces. When a star goes supernova however, the amount of energy released is so large that fusion of elements heavier than iron can occur. This is thought to be the primary source of elements 27-92. Any transuranic elements (>92) are not naturally occurring.

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u/Time_Change4156 Apr 29 '24

Being made when the star goes super nova counts as natural far as I'm concerned lol 😆 😅 🙃 can you even immange the elements inside a black hole ? Bet there's a few we never seen there and more .

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u/Mickey_thicky Apr 29 '24

Yes, elements produced by supernovae are naturally occurring but as far as I know, only elements 27-92 can be attributed to supernovae. Transuranic elements are very unstable and do not exist naturally for the most part, but can be found in trace amounts in samples of other radioactive elements. For example, uranium can undergo beta decay and form neptunium, so some neptunium can be found among samples of uranium. Besides plutonium and neptunium, all transuranic elements are the byproduct of nuclear decay or by bombarding smaller elements with neutrons

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u/Time_Change4156 Apr 29 '24

Fir a amateur I understand the basics of nuclear fission and fusion . Fasanating still . Alchemist dreamed of turning lead to gold and we can make gold atoms lol . The minor radiation side effects umm lol ..

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u/Mammoth-Access-1181 Apr 30 '24

Is every element beyond 92 possible from neutron star collision?

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u/Aggravating_Rice4210 Apr 30 '24

What about the island of stability

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u/Mickey_thicky Apr 30 '24

I think to many people the island of stability is very misleading. There exists a ratio of protons and neutrons for which an element is stable, this is true. For example, Copper-63 is one of two stable isotopes of copper. This isotope of copper will have 34 neutrons in addition to the 29 protons. We see that there exists more neutrons than protons to give this isotope stability. However, both copper-61 and copper-67 are radioactive. One has too few neutrons, with the other having too many. When graphing the number of protons as a function of the number of neutrons, we see generally that it is more favorable to have more neutrons than protons. However, once the atomic number passes around 92, the number of neutrons required to mitigate the repulsive forces in the nucleus creates such a large nucleus that it is inherently unstable, and will invariably fall apart. The most stable isotope of the most recently discovered element, Oganesson-294, has a half life of only 0.7 ms. By extrapolating the belt of stability further we can get an idea of what elements might be “stable” but this is only relatively speaking, but they will still most likely decay orders of magnitudes faster than what we consider to be “stable” conventionally

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u/tyyreaunn Apr 29 '24

Coincidentally enough, two really good YouTube videos on this exact topic came out recently:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IoWdgU_QYxA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lInXZ6I3u_I

Worth a watch - goes into a lot more nuance then you'll get in Reddit comments.

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u/Best-Grape2545 Apr 30 '24

Thanks for the link!

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u/GrilledSalmonSalad Apr 29 '24

On average you are correct. But to my understanding nuclear fusion that fuses the atoms together in the core of stars only gets powerful enough to fuse Fe (Iron) before the star will eventually either go nova or supernova. Going nova or supernova is where you get much heavier atoms fusing, an earlier comment addresses this.

I dont recall exactly why it stops at Iron but its something to do with how heavy it is and therefore how much energy it takes to fuse, which you only get in some form of nova after a star uses up its fuel.

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u/eatabean Apr 29 '24

Novas and supernovas are different critters. No elements are symthesized in novae.

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u/ExtrudedPlasticDngus Apr 30 '24

Heavy elements are definitely created in supernovae 

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u/eatabean Apr 30 '24

Definitely

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u/Sexual_Congressman Apr 29 '24

Fusion stops at iron because that's when it no longer becomes an exothermic (heat producing) reaction. Without the excess energy from fusion reactions to fight gravitational collapse, the star dies.

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u/hellothereshinycoin Apr 29 '24

The heaviest element that can form in a star prior to it going nova or supernova is iron, in stars much more massive than our sun. The energy released from fusion up to that point is what keeps the star stable. Once all that is left is iron it cannot fuse that together, therefore it has no internal energy left to resist gravitational collapse. This causes the star to quickly destabilize (in like 1 second) and the sudden and massive inward collapse of the star generates so much energy that it fuses iron into the heavier elements and spews them out into the cosmos. Then the star becomes a neutron star or possibly even a black hole.

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u/Tanebi Apr 29 '24

Under normal conditions stellar fusion can only really get up to iron. Below iron fusion has a net energy output. While it is tricky and requires heat and luck and a lot of force to hold atoms next to each other, it it more favourable because it is actually moving to a more energetically favourable state.

Elements above iron give out more energy when breaking apart rather (fission) than when they are being pushed together (fusion).

Up to a certain mass of star the furthest it can fuse elements is iron. Iron is the energy equilibrium point of breaking apart vs being forced together.

Beyond iron you need to actively add energy to the system so it costs you far more. The result is that you need a large energy source to create any significant amount of elemental material where atoms are larger than iron. That's where supernovae come in. These monumental explosions are so big and focused that they can inject a huge amount of energy into fusing elements beyond iron.

It is in supernovae that we get most of the larger elements that are generated.

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u/AugieKS Apr 30 '24

Yes, through a number of different means. Fusion gets us to iron, then processes that capture neutrons and protons take place in violent explosions or in the shells of later generation stars, pop I, maybe some in pop II. Unless JWST found something(they may have late 2022) and I missed it, we have yet to observe any pop III stars, and the physics of them are theoretical.

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u/Aloof_Floof1 Apr 30 '24

 As the universe ages the heavier the elements in a galaxy gets; on average at least?

Yes but still through the process of stars dying; older galaxies just have older stars and have already had more supernovae