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davepamn davepamn
 

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 M¢25  Funded By Mahalo ? |  August 23, 2009 04:18 PM

At what point in the creation of the universe did iron emerge as an element?

Was iron created by super novas soon after the big bang?
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phryne phryne
 
 August 23, 2009 04:31 PM
Iron is formed in ordinary stars as well as in supernovae. (That's one reason why iron is reasonably abundant but heavier elements are rarer. Iron is about the heaviest element formed in stellar nucleosynthesis.)

Those first stars would have begun producing iron about 500 million years after the big bang, once it cooled enough to form ordinary matter rather than just plasma.
Source(s):
http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0405568

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omicron omicron
 
August 23, 2009 08:24 PM
Q: At what point in the creation of the universe did iron emerge as an element?

A: Iron wasn't there at the moment of "creation". It came along much later, after the universe was already on a roll.

Iron is formed by stars in their last days of going nova, and it's the heaviest element that can be formed by an ordinary nova, because it's the element with the lowest nuclear potential energy. Anything with a nucleus larger than iron requires a supernova.

Q: Was iron created by super novas soon after the big bang?

A: No, it was created by ordinary novas, and define "soon after the big bang"?

If by soon you mean within 200 million years after the Big Bang, then yes, some estimates put it at that.

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davepamn davepamn
 
August 25, 2009 04:13 AM
Which answer is right? 500 million or 200 million years?

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omicron omicron
 
August 25, 2009 05:06 AM
The earliest they can *prove* is 500 million years, from observations of some star-forming galaxys 13.2 billion liight years away. The earliest they *believe* it could have started is 200 million.

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