Iron Deficiency
We are made of stardust. If not for supernovas, we'd all have an iron deficiency.
VERY GOOD — Who knows what you will enjoy. This is my favorite story I have ever put together on Substack. I hope that any of you who read but never comment will tell me what you think by hitting the comment button TODAY. I would like to know the difference between what I enjoy developing and what you enjoy reading.
Today’s Words — fission, fusion, supernova, nebula
We recently went to the movies and saw “Oppenheimer”. It is certainly a story about explosions! Way back in 1054, the only truly advanced civilization on Earth (China) was documenting astronomical occurrences. While it is stylish to see things from a European perspective, it seems they were still splashing around in the mud. Chinese astronomers used the term guest stars. By comparison, even 500 years later, silly people in Europe were still talking about 7th heaven. The daylight sky contained an amazingly bright object for nearly two years from July 1054 to April 1056.
The picture above is the oft-photographed remnant of a great explosion we now refer to as the Crab Nebula. It can be viewed with a modest telescope. The light in the sky reached us in 1054. It is 6523 light-years away. Time for a conundrum and a bit of scale. Light from our sun takes about 8:20 minutes to arrive. When you look at the Sun (be careful) you are really seeing what it was like 8 minutes ago. When you look at the Crab Nebula, you get to see what it looked like 6523 years ago. Consider that the next time someone tells you the Earth is about 6000 years old. It is so hard to grasp how big everything really is!!!
Getting to Today
When I started writing on Substack I wanted to discuss all sorts of things. Sometimes personal, sometimes news, sometimes science, sometimes just fun. I always set out to make it upbeat. I ignore subjects unless I think I can share a unique perspective. Today is about tying together a whole bunch of posts from the past together in something I think is amazing and I hope you will feel the same way.
The Inspiration of the Stars
In the movie “Oppenheimer”, Christopher Nolan constructed a film that could be enjoyed by people across a broad spectrum. The who’s who of scientists making breakthroughs in particle physics in the years from 1900-1940 was a Golden Age of breakthroughs. I do believe it will win Best Picture and many other awards (if the strike is settled).
The periodic table near the top of the post is a tribute to good organization. I enjoyed chemistry from the get-go. If you read it left to right and top to bottom, each step increases the size of the atom. Starting at the top left we have hydrogen (H). In the middle of the third row, we have iron (Fe). The ones in the bottom rows are really large atoms and include the ones that are big enough and unstable enough that we can split them. The movie “Oppenheimer” is about the scientific possibility of splitting Uranium (U) and Plutonium (Pu). We call that process radioactive fission.
Star Talk
One of the most spectacular things in our universe is supernovas. If you love stargazing you probably have heard some of the terms for stars like red dwarfs and white dwarfs. All of these cool monikers have to do with what happens to stars in their twilight. Smaller, more basic stars like ours (a yellow dwarf) just die without theatrics — they just run out of fuel (mostly hydrogen). Larger stars, in their late stages, sometimes explode. The destiny of stars seems to come down to their size. When you push atoms together, they repel each other because at their cores they are positively charged. Only under the most extreme of conditions (like in the core of a star) do we have enough heat and pressure to push a couple of hydrogen atoms together. When we do, they FUSE together and become an atom of Helium (He) {next number in the periodic table} and a lot of energy is released. The amount of energy released is GREATER than the amount of energy required to fuse them together. This, in a nutshell, is what fusion means. The only example of fusion on our planet is the development of thermonuclear weapons — hydrogen bombs.
The idea of nuclear fusion on Earth (with the exception of hydrogen bombs) has been a pipe dream for generations. One of the players in the movie “Oppenheimer” was Edward Teller. He was the guy in the room who was thinking why stop at fission atomic bombs (like Hiroshima and Nagasaki) which were basically the release of energy from splitting Uranium and Plutonium respectively? Teller was the big thinker who proposed making a fission device as the TRIGGER to fuse some hydrogen — a hydrogen bomb. They are thousands of times more powerful than the horrific weapons we used against Imperial Japan. When I was in school, the idea of fusion energy (instead of coal or oil or solar or hydro) was freely discussed as reasonable and right around the corner. In an old post, I explored the human tendency to be unable to resist the big, shiny object. It was a two-part post titled Deep Thinkers Parts 1 & 2. My opinion is going big rarely works out. Now let us return to the stars. My hope is the story I tell will bring us to the INEVITABILITY of how things came to be in our little corner of the universe named Earth.
Lifecycle of a Star
Stars are loaded with hydrogen in the beginning. It is the first and simplest of elements. Depending upon their size, while they start with fusing hydrogen (into helium) what happens next depends. Sometimes as they start running low on hydrogen, they might start fusing helium into carbon and oxygen. The hydrogen is fused in the core of the star. When it fuses, the helium begins accumulating in the core. This is when it gets INTERESTING. At the beginning of the post, I chose the title Iron Deficiency. Whether you want to make some sunlight (if you are a star) or want to destroy the world (if you are Edward Teller), we fuse things together. When you fuse things together, they get bigger and they give off a lot of energy. Alas, one of my favorite expressions is “all things are true until they are not”. This brings us to the funny circumstance of iron.
Chemistry and Heat
Iron has played a critical role in the emergence of life on this planet. Where did it come from??? When stuff mixes in chemistry we use a couple of handy words to explain what is going on. Most of the chemical reactions in this world are exothermic. This means as a result of reacting heat is given off. In the case of our sun, the reaction of hydrogen fusing in the core creates the radiation and sunbeams that make their way to Earth. A small subset of chemical reactions actually consume more energy than they create — they cool things off. These types of reactions are known as endothermic. If you go back to our Periodic Table, everything just moves along in stars. In the extremely hot and dense stars they move along from hydrogen to helium to carbon to oxygen to neon and finally manganese (Mn) which is RIGHT NEXT to iron. A very large and dense star just keeps making bigger stuff. All of these atoms from hydrogen to manganese are quite cooperative because when you fuse them together they give off heat. Everything works until we get to iron.
What’s So Special About Iron?
One of the most important things about Earth that makes life possible is the core of our planet is made out of iron. How did that happen and why does it matter? The Sun sends so much light and radiation our way, we would never have ended up with any life here without (1) an atmosphere and (2) an electromagnetic field that diverts lots of light from reaching the planet. Even if a goose evolved, it would get cooked without both of them as protection. It is all the iron at the center of our planet that is responsible for the electromagnetic field that makes life possible!
So Where the Heck Did the Iron Come From?
Under the right conditions, stars get to the point (if they are large enough) where they start making iron. Everything goes pear-shaped when stars begin trying to fuse the iron. Almost instantaneously, the star stops generating energy and there is not enough gravity to hold up the gases at its outer edges. This is mostly because all the fusions before have always PUSHED energy outward, iron PULLS energy from the outer star inward. The star collapses violently (and rapidly) and we get that wonderful astronomy word, a supernova. EVERYTHING from Hydrogen to Uranium with lots of Iron which composes the core of the star when things go badly explode with unimaginable energy. When someone shares the wonderful expression WE ARE ALL MADE OF STARDUST, this is how it happens! The special nature of iron as the first atom when you fuse it and it doesn’t release energy is what causes all the ruckus! For me, the beauty AND simplicity of the explanation of how all these elements got distributed all around the universe is a pleasant thing. How do all of the diverse mix of elements make it all over the universe? Simple — a very big boom!
Why Is This So Cool?
Every time a star goes supernova, iron (and lots of other cool stuff) gets expelled and distributed across great distances across galaxies and the universe. This is just how it works! A good-sized glob of iron cools and eventually can become the basis for a planet who knows where! If you are interested in a deep dive into supernovae, here is the video for you.
The Greater Truth
I am an inquisitive soul. When I stumble upon a Substack that offers an explanation for some phenomena that is not well understood, I look for simple. When the “theory” is meandering and inordinately complex (like string theory) I assume a simpler explanation will emerge and the blathering conjecture will die a quiet death. This has been the history of scientific theoretical development. I think all of the “hard stuff” starts out with way too much complexity and invariably collapses to simple and elegant. Maybe there are some things that will turn out to be inordinately difficult to explain and understanding will remain the bastion of a small number of us. I am betting on simplicity and elegance.
Other References
If you wonder about the fate of our star, here is a great reference.1
While we covered a lot of information, I hope it is nevertheless a simple and sensible explanation of things. We don’t get to nine million species without iron. I believe the environment can only emerge (AND BE COMMON) in the universe if there is a SIMPLE EXPLANATION for how the iron got here. This sort of thing always brings me back to Ockham’s Razor. It is a recurring theme in my writing but here is a good example.2
Supernovas are not that common (at least through the eyes of earthlings and what we can perceive. Astronomers name them (not so creatively) in the form SN 1054. This refers to the supernova of 1054 that the Chinese referred to as a guest star. It was so bright, it remained visible during the day for almost two years. Here’s the Wikipedia page about it.3
SN 1054 must have been quite a mystery. While the Chinese realized it was a star, Europeans largely remained wedded to mystical thinking for hundreds of years. The absurd roots of the expression 7th heaven are a perfect example. Here is a link to one of the transformations of our belief from mysticism to exploration. It is about the telescope. Until I wrote this one way back when I never knew WTH people were talking about when they said I’m in 7th heaven.4
The Poll & Music
The music today is compliments of an old friend. He is a retired elementary school teacher. He made this movie with his 3rd graders virtually during the pandemic. It was a joy getting to know him and his family in our old neighborhood. It is THE BEST thing you will see today and perhaps a very long time. Hug a teacher and say thank you. One of my early posts, “I See” was about the impact of the telescope. At the time, he shared this video in the comments. Perhaps 5% of you were subscribers when I wrote that.
If you are a pay-it-forward type, go on YouTube and like it and comment. If this video DOES NOT GET some clicks, my faith in human nature will be diminished.
Keep it Simple is one of my favorite bits of opinion based on Ockham’s Razor.
For the crowd that scours the comments, one of the inspirations for the post (and certainly the video at the end) is my former neighbor. I would imagine a 3rd grade teacher like him would be a pretty fine result.
Here is the video from the end of the post available for comment and likes https://youtu.be/KTmHzc8HuCQ
Dave was also kind enough to share a video from an interactive lesson plan about supernovas for 3rd graders. This sort of thing is the reason I don't worry about the children of flyover country being ready to engage in the future.
"And this short clip is from a 3rd grade supernova lesson (this is the demo video) we called "Playground Supernova." The kids get to try it with their own set of three balls up on the playground. Equal parts hilarious pandemonium, sudden and amazing success (when they finally get it to work) and science."
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/-Nder1H4bzA
One of your best posts.