New evidence reveals how heavy elements were created after the Big Bang

[beecee]

https://phys.org/news/2018-11-evidence-reveals-heavy-elements-big.html

The Big Bang theory and the question of how life on Earth began has fascinated scientists for decades, but now new research from The University of Western Australia suggests the conditions that resulted from the Big Bang are different to what we thought.
extract:

"It is traditionally considered that turbulence was the mechanism for energy transfer and accumulation which resulted in chemicals being formed in the supernova," Professor Abarzhi said.

"However our research has revealed it wasn't turbulent but actually a slow process where hot spots of energy were localised and trapped, resulting in the formation of, for example iron, gold and silver from atoms produced by the Big Bang".

Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2018-11-evidence-reveals-heavy-elements-big.html#jCp

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the paper:

http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2018/11/21/1714502115

Supernova, nuclear synthesis, fluid instabilities, and interfacial mixing:

Abstract:

Supernovae and their remnants are a central problem in astrophysics due to their role in the stellar evolution and nuclear synthesis. A supernova’s explosion is driven by a blast wave causing the development of Rayleigh–Taylor and Richtmyer–Meshkov instabilities and leading to intensive interfacial mixing of materials of a progenitor star. Rayleigh–Taylor and Richtmyer–Meshkov mixing breaks spherical symmetry of a star and provides conditions for synthesis of heavy mass elements in addition to light mass elements synthesized in the star before its explosion. By focusing on hydrodynamic aspects of the problem, we apply group theory analysis to identify the properties of Rayleigh–Taylor and Richtmyer–Meshkov dynamics with variable acceleration, discover subdiffusive character of the blast wave-induced interfacial mixing, and reveal the mechanism of energy accumulation and transport at small scales in supernovae.