Dr. Kenneth Hicks
“What is the origin of the elements? This question has been identified by the National Academy of Sciences as one of the key questions about our universe,” writes Dr. Kenneth Hicks in his Columbus Dispatch column.
“You might think that the answer is obvious. In high school science classes, we are taught that nuclei fuse together in the center of stars. While that is true, it only gets us halfway through the periodic table,” says Hicks, Professor of Physics & Astronomy.
Elements heavier than iron are difficult to produce with this process. Heavier elements, such as gold and lead, must come from a different source.
In 1957, a group of physicists led by Fred Hoyle published a seminal paper on the synthesis of elements in stars. They concluded that supernova explosions are the likely source of heavy elements.
Over the past 50 years, models of supernova explosions have improved dramatically. However, this led to a problem — the most-sophisticated computer simulations did not produce heavy elements at the rate needed to explain the abundances in our galaxy.
That means that either the nuclear physics input to models of supernova is wrong or there is another source of heavy elements. Scientists are pursuing both angles.
Read the rest of his column in the Dispatch.
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