The Heaviest Elements

The formation of the heaviest elements

A ll of the hydrogen and most of the helium in the universe emerged 13.8 billion years ago from the Big Bang. The remainder of the chemical elements, except for a tiny amount of lithium, were forged in stellar interiors, supernova explosions, and neutron-star mergers. Elements up to and including iron are made in the hot cores of short-lived massive stars. There, nuclear fusion creates ever-hea...

Genesis of the heaviest elements in the Milky Way Galaxy.

We review the origin and evolution of the heavy elements, those with atomic numbers greater than 30, in the early history of the Milky Way. There is a large star-to-star bulk scatter in the concentrations of heavy elements with respect to the lighter metals, which suggests an early chemically unmixed and inhomogeneous Galaxy. The relative abundance patterns among the heavy elements are often ve...

Theoretical Investigations of Trends in Volatility of the Heaviest Elements

Elements 112 through 118 are expected to be very volatile. Early extrapolations of the sublimation enthalpies, ∆Hsub=∆Hf(g), of the solid state in groups 12 through 17 have indeed shown the lowest ∆Hsub for the heaviest elements in each group of the elements, respectively [1,2]. (The gas-phase chemistry experiments give ∆Hsub as a measure of volatility of an element using measured ∆Hads on meta...

Chemistry of the Heaviest Elements - - One Atom at a Time

Origin and distribution of the lightest and heaviest elements in the primitive halo

The detailed abundance patterns of extremely metal-poor (EMP) stars are our best guide to the earliest stages of the synthesis of the heavier chemical elements. For carbon and the heaviest neutron-capture elements, this is best studied in stars in which these elements are strongly enhanced relative to the pattern in the general EMP population. It is then crucial to know if these excesses were i...