Cosmic nuclear fission seen for 1st time in 'incredibly profound' discovery

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• autotldr@lemmings.world [bot] ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  This is the best summary I could come up with:

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  “People have thought fission was happening in the cosmos, but to date, no one has been able to prove it,” Matthew Mumpower, research co-author and a scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory, said in a statement.

  Scientists know that nuclear fusion is not just the primary source of energy for  stars, but also the force that forges a variety of elements, the “heaviest” being iron.

  The evidence of nuclear fission discovered by Mumpower and the team comes in the form of a correlation between “light precision metals,” like silver, and “rare earth nuclei,” like europium, showing in some stars.

  As the outer layers of these dying stars are blown away, the stellar cores with masses between one and two times that of the sun collapse into a width of around 12 miles (20 kilometers).

  This causes neutron stars to eventually collide, merge and, unsurprisingly given their extreme and exotic nature, create a very violent environment.

  Following this, Mumpower’s collaborator and TRIUMF scientist Nicole Vassh calculated how the r-process would lead to the co-production of light precision metals such as ruthenium, rhodium, palladium and silver  —  as well as rare earth nuclei, like europium, gadolinium, dysprosium and holmium.

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  The original article contains 973 words, the summary contains 197 words. Saved 80%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!

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