Where's All the Gold?

Post # 85  

      It is one of the most malleable metals.  In fact it is so malleable that it is really kind of useless.  You can't make a usable knife out of it, unless you're going to cut something really soft, like a fungus.  You definitely can't use it to make an axe.  As armor it would be more effective to use a second shirt, or a jacket.  But it's shiny, and people like shiny.  It's shininess alone doesn't give gold its value though, for both brass and bronze can be made to shine (their value lies in their strength).  Silver gleams.  Gold however is rare.  
      It is very rare - not just here on earth, but also in the universe.  Carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, silicon, and even iron are found in abundance wherever in the universe you look.  But gold is hard to find.  Because of its rarity people want it.  It makes them stand out.  They can say, "I have something you don't."  When rulers have gold it shows that they have power, for they can have something you don't.  And if you do have some gold, they have more - much more.  They have it in abundance.  Pirates sail the roughest seas to get their hands on some more gold.  Highwaymen held people up for it.  Miners dug and panned for it, politicians lie to get more of it, and we work our butts off every day for it, and we rarely see any of it, and the measly amount of gold substitute we get is spent before it ever arrives.  Everybody wants gold.  

                                            Pirates have always had a fondness for gold

      Why?  Why should everyone want something shiny, yet metallically useless just because it's so rare?  If you knew the full answer to that you would also be able to ponder and know why a bowl of petunias would say, "Oh no, not again" before crashing to the ground.  Face it.  People want that rare crap.  
      A scientific team at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics  have just figured out why gold is so rare.  It is rare because of the process by which it is made.  Gold and other heavy elements are produced as the result of a collision between two neutron stars.  Neutron stars aren't the most common thing as it is, but to find them in a pair is truly rare. 
      Neutron stars are what is left after a star explodes in a nova.  All that is left of it is neutrons.  They are so dense that they are only a few miles wide, but a mere teaspoon of a neutron star would weigh 100 million tons.  

      When neutron stars collide it produces an explosive event called a short gamma ray burst.  This is what creates the gold and other heavy elements.  Last month the researchers at Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics recorded one such event.  They witnessed a glow that lasted for days, which they say would have created a very large amount of heavy elements, including gold.  
      "We estimate that the amount of gold produced and ejected during the merger of the two neutron stars may be as large as ten moon masses - quite a lot of bling!"  lead author Edo Berger of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.  Berger presented his team's findings at a press conference on July 17. 

 

 

      Gamma ray bursts are flashes of high level energy produced by massive explosions.  They can be created either by two neutron stars colliding, or by a black hole swallowing up a neutron star, as in the series of pictures above.  

      Berger and his team of researchers from Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics have submitted their results for publication in the Astrophysical Journal of Letters.  

      Getting all that gold wouldn't be easy.  First of all the Gamma ray burst that was witnessed was 3.9 billion light years away in a "galaxy far far away."  Secondly the ejected material extends over a vastness of space of many, many light years across.  You couldn't exactly pan for it.