Hi,
For example - gold tends to occur in veins - areas of the earths crust with a hugely disproportionate amount of that element. Within those area there are nuggets that are almost pure. Its the same for a lot of elements.
My question is how did these clusters of the same element get there? It seems to me either :
1) In a supernova billions of years ago - a bunch of eg gold was produced in one tiny region of the star - and it stayed together ever since. This sounds unlikely to me! A supernova is surely going to disperse everything and mix it all up?
2) When the solar system was forming it started as mostly fine dust with all elements all mixed up - however then some kind of mechanism in the accumulation of dust into planets caused specific heavy elements to clump together. e.g. something akin to panning for gold.
3) Some process during the lifetime of the earth caused eg gold to be clustered together. i.e. something complicated in the mechanics of the earths core causes elements to clump together - and they eventually find themselves near the surface.
However none of these seems very plausible to me. I would guess it must be some variation on 2) - but how/why did that happen? i.e. how in amongst all that swirling mess of dust did a nugget of pure gold get formed?
Does someone know the answer? I've often wondered about it :).
thanks - Drelda
For example - gold tends to occur in veins - areas of the earths crust with a hugely disproportionate amount of that element. Within those area there are nuggets that are almost pure. Its the same for a lot of elements.
My question is how did these clusters of the same element get there? It seems to me either :
1) In a supernova billions of years ago - a bunch of eg gold was produced in one tiny region of the star - and it stayed together ever since. This sounds unlikely to me! A supernova is surely going to disperse everything and mix it all up?
2) When the solar system was forming it started as mostly fine dust with all elements all mixed up - however then some kind of mechanism in the accumulation of dust into planets caused specific heavy elements to clump together. e.g. something akin to panning for gold.
3) Some process during the lifetime of the earth caused eg gold to be clustered together. i.e. something complicated in the mechanics of the earths core causes elements to clump together - and they eventually find themselves near the surface.
However none of these seems very plausible to me. I would guess it must be some variation on 2) - but how/why did that happen? i.e. how in amongst all that swirling mess of dust did a nugget of pure gold get formed?
Does someone know the answer? I've often wondered about it :).
thanks - Drelda
via International Skeptics Forum http://ift.tt/1exI773
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