Will Form 8865 Mining 2023-2024

Music in medieval times. Alchemists tried to achieve the seemingly impossible. They wanted to transform lowly lead into gleaming gold. History portrays these people as aged eccentrics. But if only they had known that their dreams were actually achievable. Indeed, today we can manufacture gold on earth thanks to modern inventions that those medieval alchemists missed by a few centuries. But to understand how this precious metal became embedded in our planet to start with, we have to gaze upwards at the stars. Gold is extraterrestrial. Instead of arising from the planet's rocky crust, it was actually cooked up in space and is present on earth because of cataclysmic stellar explosions called supernovae. Stars are mostly made up of hydrogen, the simplest and lightest element. The enormous gravitational pressure of so much material compresses and triggers nuclear fusion in the star's core. This process releases energy from the hydrogen, making the stars shine. Over many millions of years, fusion transforms hydrogen into heavier elements: helium, carbon, and oxygen. Burning subsequent elements faster and faster, it reaches iron and nickel. However, at that point, nuclear fusion no longer releases enough energy, and the pressure from the core peters out. The outer layers collapse into the center and, bouncing back from this sudden injection of energy, the star explodes, forming a supernova. The extreme pressure of a collapsing star is so high that subatomic protons and electrons are forced together in the core, forming neutrons. Neutrons have no repelling electric charge, so they're easily captured by the iron group elements. Multiple neutron captures enable the formation of heavier elements that a star under normal circumstances can't form. From silver to gold, passing through lead and on to uranium. In extreme contrast to the million-year transformation of hydrogen to helium, the creation of...