@APoD

My first thought was: how do elements created from merging neutron stars escape? I know they're insanely dense with gravity some 2 billion times stronger than the Earth.

So I googled it and discovered that material is still ejected in an event called a "kilonova". So named because its peak brightness is about 1000 times that of a typical nova.

It's impossible to imagine the energy involved in events like that.

#elements #nova #gravity #kilonova #neutronstars

https://botsin.space/@APoD/109652402798415513

@APoD For those curious (like me), the original/more complete version is at:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemical_element#/media/File:Nucleosynthesis_periodic_table.svg

TLDR; The undescribed "brown" is "Human synthesis" or "No stable isotopes"

@APoD What's interesting / ironic is that helium on Earth is almost all ... of neutron-star origin.

That is, it's formed within the Earth's crust and core through decay of radioactive elements --- heavy stuff such as uranium, thorium, and plutonium naturally occurring. These give off beta particles --- a pair of protons and neutrons, which capture electrons and emerge as helium gas, a/k/a helium-4. Most of what humans capture is trapped in natural gas deposits and is recovered as part of the processing of gas wells.

So we get the second-most-abundant element in the Universe which is normally created from the Big Bang directly or stellar fusion through the long round-trip of neutron-star collisions and geological processes.