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Tuesday 20
Sep. 21st, 2011 12:06 amTuesday 20- I did my stretches, lifted weights, core trainer, and rode my bike.
I worked around the house and yard doing this and that; plants were happy to get some water.
I went for my evening walk listening to an astronomy lecture by Alex Filippenko about the formation of stars.
I watched lecture 24 of MIT Introduction to Biology: AIDS.
I did my stretches and went for a night run.
I went outside to do a little stargazing and again checked out Delta Cephei to see if it had changed in brightness- I really didn’t notice any change so I must had caught it just before its nadir two days ago when I first checked.
I read aloud from the textbook “Astronomy Today” about “Making Elements Beyond Iron” using the neutron capture or s-process- where neutrons bombard nuclei of elements like 56Fe +N--> 57Fe and continues all the way to 59Fe that decays into Cobalt-59 which captures a neutron to form Coalt-60 and so on… Interesting… says that this slow neutron capture s-process is responsible for silver, gold, and lead. I had learned/always thought that these heavier elements beyond Iron-56 were created in supernovas. In the next section will be the discussion on supernovas. I’m really going to have to check up on this. What I was taught/ always thought was that stars much like our Sun in size can maybe create elements up to oxygen, more massive stars create heavier elements, but really massive stars could only burn up to Iron-56 which is stable and would not fuse thus the star’s core could not be held up by fusion, gravity would finally prevail and the core would rapidly collapse creating a supernova and that’s where silver, gold, lead and all the heavier elements were made. Maybe I was taught the easy version back then. Now I’m lost :(
Also read books on my reading list.
I worked around the house and yard doing this and that; plants were happy to get some water.
I went for my evening walk listening to an astronomy lecture by Alex Filippenko about the formation of stars.
I watched lecture 24 of MIT Introduction to Biology: AIDS.
I did my stretches and went for a night run.
I went outside to do a little stargazing and again checked out Delta Cephei to see if it had changed in brightness- I really didn’t notice any change so I must had caught it just before its nadir two days ago when I first checked.
I read aloud from the textbook “Astronomy Today” about “Making Elements Beyond Iron” using the neutron capture or s-process- where neutrons bombard nuclei of elements like 56Fe +N--> 57Fe and continues all the way to 59Fe that decays into Cobalt-59 which captures a neutron to form Coalt-60 and so on… Interesting… says that this slow neutron capture s-process is responsible for silver, gold, and lead. I had learned/always thought that these heavier elements beyond Iron-56 were created in supernovas. In the next section will be the discussion on supernovas. I’m really going to have to check up on this. What I was taught/ always thought was that stars much like our Sun in size can maybe create elements up to oxygen, more massive stars create heavier elements, but really massive stars could only burn up to Iron-56 which is stable and would not fuse thus the star’s core could not be held up by fusion, gravity would finally prevail and the core would rapidly collapse creating a supernova and that’s where silver, gold, lead and all the heavier elements were made. Maybe I was taught the easy version back then. Now I’m lost :(
Also read books on my reading list.
