Nuclear inputs to the rapid neutron-capture process
About half of the elements heavier than iron, including gold and uranium, were built by rapid capture of neutrons in violent events such as neutron-star mergers. Predicting how much of each element forms needs properties of thousands of very neutron-rich nuclei never made in a laboratory.
Why it matters
Without these nuclear inputs, element abundances in old stars and the light of kilonovae cannot be used to identify which cosmic events made the heavy elements.
Review
Cowan, Sneden, Lawler, Aprahamian, Wiescher, Langanke, Martinez-Pinedo, Thielemann, Origin of the heaviest elements: the rapid neutron-capture process, Reviews of Modern Physics, 2021. https://arxiv.org/abs/1901.01410 reference checked
Timestamp record
- Signed record
- 008542e5fb6a…
- Public log
- Entry 294, in checkpoint 2,123
- In the log by
- Block 969,698, 2026-10-03
This text was in the PubPhys log by that date. The date says nothing about when the problem was first posed.