Orionid meteor Shower

        Last night at 3am before I went to bed I went back outside to view the Orionid meteor shower after an unsuccessful attempt at 10pm when I didn’t see a one. Orion was higher in the Northeast sky and I wasn’t let down! Even though the third quarter Moon was washing out the smaller meteors I saw many quickly shoot across the sky in bright white streaks, too cool!

More on Nucleosynthesis

        I went for my evening walk and listened to the astronomy lecture on “Nucleosynthesis”. They discussed the process of Stellar Nucleosynthesis where heavier elements are made by the proton-proton cycle that creates lighter elements in cool stars, and the carbon-nitrogen-oxygen cycle in stars that are larger than 1.4 solar masses. These larger stars burn and create elements all the way up to iron 57 that needs more energy than the star can produce to burn and there is no pressure holding up the stars core, and the star collapses (depending on its size) into a neutron star or a black hole. This is called Explosive Nucleosynthesis. The collapse takes less than a second and creates a tremendous amount of energy to bombard iron and other elements with neutrons to create heavier elements like gold, uranium, and the like. There is another Explosive process: one that involves an accretion disk that surrounds a white dwarf, a neutron star, or a black hole. In each case, it involves a binary system where the dwarf, a neutron star, or a black hole sucks matter from a neighboring large star, the disk reaches critical mass, and goes nova repeatedly. In addition, there is one other process where an old star that is rich in neutrons speeding from its core hit other atoms in the stars atmosphere to combine into heavier atoms. I’ll have to combine all that I have written so far on Nucleosynthesis and add to it later when I have time, but right or wrong; this is how I understand the process at this time. We are indeed made of star stuff!

Big Bang Nucleosynthesis

        Went for my evening walk listening again to “Nucleosynthesis”. It starts with the “Big Bang Nucleosynthesis” at ten billion degrees where high-speed collisions occur in a soup of Protons, Neutrons, and Electrons. A free Proton catches an Electron and becomes a Hydrogen atom. The Hydrogen atom fuses with another Hydrogen atom to form Deuterium with one Proton and one Neutron, and releases a Positron (antielectron-antimatter that is annihilated when it encounters and Electron, producing two high-energy Photons- Gamma Rays), and a Neutrino (an elementary particle that has little mass and doesn’t carry an electric charge). Then the Deuterium fuses into Helium-3, and two Helium-3 fuses into Helium-4 that is very stable. An increase in energy was released as heavier isotopes and elements were fused. In the first three minutes after the Big Bang most of the Deuterium was converted into Helium and small amounts of Lithium, and nothing heavier because things cooled down and the process stopped. I’ll listen to it again hopefully tomorrow and write about Stellar Nucleosynthesis.