Psyche - mission to an iron asteroid

Just think if they find something better then iron........Ohhhh a new gold rush........we would be there in a few years.
 
Gold is a product of neutron star alchemy, so unlikely.

Diamonds however...
 
Supernovae I thought - but still unlikely.
 
Only the first 28 elements on the periodic table are byproducts of normal stellar activity. Anything beyond that requires work on the nucleus.
 
A supernova is a normal part of some stars' lifeline and it's this final explosion that provides the energy to squeeze atoms together to form elements beyond Iron (element 26). At least that was the way I was told.
 
PaulR said:
Supernovae I thought - but still unlikely.
Click to expand...
We are the second set (or more) of planets with a Sun at or around this location, (stuff left over from a previous supernova) otherwise we would not have the higher elements beyond iron around.

The transuranic elements (anything beyond Uranium 92) were discovered after we started playing around looking for fuel for the A bomb, some were created in the lab at first then found later in nature, some of the elements below Uranium are by products of radioactive decay of the higher ones.

If done right you can create gold out of lead just by removing some electrons, but it would be a bit radioactive.

There is evidence that around 2 billion years ago a super reactor took off, this created a lot of lower elements during the time it was active.

I would not have wanted to be around Africa at that time.
The Workings of an Ancient Nuclear Reactor
Is There Really A 2 Billion-Year-Old Nuclear Reactor In Africa?
 
Terryl said:
We are the second set (or more) of planets with a Sun at or around this location, (stuff left over from a previous supernova) otherwise we would not have the higher elements beyond iron around.

The transuranic elements (anything beyond Uranium 92) were discovered after we started playing around looking for fuel for the A bomb, some were created in the lab at first then found later in nature, some of the elements below Uranium are by products of radioactive decay of the higher ones.

If done right you can create gold out of lead just by removing some electrons, but it would be a bit radioactive.

There is evidence that around 2 billion years ago a super reactor took off, this created a lot of lower elements during the time it was active.

I would not have wanted to be around Africa at that time.
The Workings of an Ancient Nuclear Reactor
Is There Really A 2 Billion-Year-Old Nuclear Reactor In Africa?
Click to expand...

Its not electrons, the two elements need to have similar proton numbers (or be split into other elements/isotopes) before there is true alchemy

I believe gold can be created using mercury, but I would have to look back through notes in chemistry lessons that I studied some 40 years back.
 
From memory I don't think Africa was around a couple of billion (US) years ago, it would have been part of a super continent, there would have been nothing oxygen breathing above the ocean(s) either, since the element wasn't a significant part of the Earth's atmosphere.
 
I remember when it split off and went South....
 
It's been getting cold here at night, but the smoke from the big fire up North of me (the Camp Fire) settles down here in the morning, I thought that the house was on fire a couple of days ago, been staying inside.
 
How far are you from the blaze(s) ?
 
And how much vegetation is there around you?
 
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