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 M¢25  Funded By Mahalo ? |  August 23, 2009 04:17 AM

At what point after the "Big Bang" did iron result?

Was iron produced from super quasers at the edge of the known universe?

Is iron spread through out the universe?
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August 23, 2009 08:54 AM
Iron is produced in the cores of massive stars (at least 8-11 solar masses) as they near the end of their main-sequence lives. Silicon produced through nucleosynthesis earlier in the star's life undergoes successive alpha-particle fusions, culminating in the formation of nickel-56. Nickel-56 is unstable and decays into iron-56, the most common isotope of that element. Iron-52 is also produced and is in fact the precursor nucleus to nickel-56 in the fusion chain.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_burning_process

After the Big Bang, the universe had to first cool enough for neutral atoms to form, and then the atoms had to collect into gas clouds dense enough to trigger star formation. It is estimated that this process took about 100 million years. It then took a few million more years for the most massive of these stars to evolve to the iron-fusing stage, become supernovae, and blast the newly created iron into surrounding space. All of the iron in the universe was formed in massive stars scattered throughout the universe and distributed by the supernova explosions of those stars.

http://access.ncsa.illinois.edu/Stories/FirstStars/Stars1.html

Quasars are a class of galaxy with extremely active nuclei. As such, they certainly contain massive stars which produce iron in their cores, but there is nothing about quasars as a whole that would make them extraordinary iron producers.

http://csep10.phys.utk.edu/astr162/lect/active/quasars.html
Asker's Rating:
• badaspie, you stating that iron was created from 8-11 solar mass stars and not necessarily quasars. Your also suggesting that the Milky Way has a significant number of stars that could produce iron and that iron is detectable in the Milky Way. Therefore, Iron is not dependent on quasars at near the origins of the Big Bang.


Tags: quasars, iron

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August 23, 2009 06:20 AM
The Big Bang jumpstarts the initial large-scale production of hydrogen, deuterium, helium and lithium.
The Iron Epoch
From one billion to three billion years after the Galaxy formed, supernovae from white dwarf stars a bit larger than the Sun produced large amounts of iron. The addition of large amounts of iron to the Milky Way's chemical stew can be deduced by the relative decrease of heavier metals within stars which hold about 1/100th of the Sun's overall metal abundance.
Source(s):
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/milkyway-00b.html


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August 23, 2009 07:54 PM
Q: At what point after the "Big Bang" did iron result?

A: When the first star went nova.

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