That seems pretty specific. Why iron and not something else, like butter, donuts, or sitting on the couch playing video games — all the things working to kill me? Is iron poison to stars? An iron bar? Possibly iron bullets? Iron punches? Possibly from fashioning a suit and attacking it as some kind of Iron Man? Time for some stellar physics. Stars are massive balls of plasma.
Mostly hydrogen and helium, and leftover salad from the Big Bang. Mass holds them together in a sphere, creating temperatures and pressures at their cores, where atoms of hydrogen are crushed together into helium, releasing energy. This energy, in the form of photons pushes outward. As they escape the star, this counteracts the force of gravity trying to pull it inward.
Over the course of billions of years, the star uses up the reserves of hydrogen, building up helium. Then it can switch to oxygen, and then silicon, and all the way up the periodic table of elements.
The most massive stars in the Universe, the ones with at least 8 times the mass of the Sun, have enough temperature and pressure that they can fuse elements all the way up to iron, the 26th element on the Periodic Table. A star spends its life fusing hydrogen into helium. It then starts to fuse elements that are a bit heavier, leading up iron.
Once iron comes into the equation, things get very bad very quickly. Later on, the remainder of its gas gets energized by the core it leaves behind, either a pulsar or a neutron star sometimes, if the star is massive enough, it leaves a stellarmass black hole behind instead , and it glows brilliantly for a time.
We call these amazing things supernova remnants. Care about supporting clean energy adoption? Find out how much money and planet! By signing up through this link , Futurism. Share This Article. More on FromQuarkstoQuasars. Keep up. Iron can also fuse into nickel in this way inside a star and it does in small amounts, but mostly beyond iron, and certainly beyond nickel, heavier elements are created through the S-Process.
This happens when a free neutron binds to the atomic nucleus and over time, the addition of neutrons can lead to beta decay, where an electron is ejected and a proton remains - adding to the atomic number.
This is undoubtedly true. The stars that go super-nova are incredibly large and the iron doesn't exactly sink to the core right away.
It takes some time. For a star to go kablooie supernova , it needs an iron core of both enough purity where it's no longer undergoing expansion from nearby fusion, and enough size for it to undergo rapid collapse in a way that effects the star around it almost instantaneously. I'm not clear on the exact process, but it requires way more than just a little iron. As a layman's guess, it might require a Jupiter sized ball of iron.
Perhaps a fair bit more than that. Sign up to join this community. The best answers are voted up and rise to the top. Stack Overflow for Teams — Collaborate and share knowledge with a private group. Create a free Team What is Teams? Learn more. Does any iron fuse in stars before they go supernova?
Ask Question. Sign up to join this community. The best answers are voted up and rise to the top. Stack Overflow for Teams — Collaborate and share knowledge with a private group. Create a free Team What is Teams? Learn more. Why can't Iron fusion occur in stars? Ask Question. Asked 8 years, 1 month ago. Active 1 year, 6 months ago. Viewed 20k times.
Improve this question. The full answer to this question, though, will need a good deal of stellar structure to explain. Add a comment. Active Oldest Votes. Improve this answer. John Rennie John Rennie k gold badges silver badges bronze badges.
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