What created the heavier elements?
We are all fairly familiar with the idea that “in the beginning” there was only mostly Hydrogen and a little Helium, and that fusion in stars then creates other elements up to iron. That’s because fusing releases energy up to iron – whereas to make elements heavier than iron requires energy to be input. And, we are mostly familiar with the further paradigm that heavier elements are created in kilonovae and supernovae (technically the rapid neutron-capture process driven by their gamma ray bursts [GRB]).
But some doubt has now been cast on whether that last paradigm is sufficient… Kilonovae have been well studied – particularly one in 2017 – which confirmed the production of heavy elements. However, kilonovae are rare events – insufficient to account for the production of all heavy elements. What about the GRB from a supernova – well the “Brightest of All Time” was recently studied by the James Webb Space Telescope which found no evidence of heavy element creation!
So it is now thought that there must be another completely unknown source/process for the creation of heavier elements – in addition to the GRBs from kilonovae and supernovae.
