Iron

[JimC]

I'm not sure I approve of puns that involve misspelt words...

[Svartalf]

If misspelling were banned I'd be too, esspecially with that wonky keyboard of mmine.

[JimC]

If misspelling were banned I'd be too, esspecially with that wonky keyboard of mmine.

To enter Clinton mode, we can make allowances for damned foreigners...

[Svartalf]

From a convict? how gracious !

[mistermack]

Don't quote me, because I can't be bothered to check.

But I don't think iron makes stars explode. Iron is formed WHEN they explode. And the Sun is too small to do that.

It's their overall mass that determines whether they will explode or not. The Sun will swell to become a red giant, in about five billion years time. Or something like that.

No, as explained, the fusion of elements into iron requires more energy than it releases, hence why there is a rapid implosion (i.e. supernova) when a star hits that stage.

I don't think that's right. Iron production is exothermic, but only very slightly. It's fusion of iron into something else that requires the energy. Actually, it's nickle which is the very last on the list, before energy input is required. When a supernova goes off, there is a lot of radioactive nickle blown into space, and that decays into iron.

From what I gather, our sun will make iron, but the iron can never escape the core unless there is a collision with another star.

You need a star of about 25 solar masses, before it can explode as a supernova and release the heavy elements into space.

[cronus]

Iron is made in filaments inside stars. Wires. They create massive magnetic fields and it is these that what collapse stars.

http://www.int.washington.edu/talks/Wor ... er_INT.pdf

Core collapse polarization tends to be larger at later times when
see deeper in and larger when outer hydrogen envelope is less
when see deeper in, both imply it is the machinery, the core
collapse mechanism itself that is strongly asymmetric (Wang et
al. 1996, 2001; Leonard et al. 2001). The explosion is often (but
not always) substantially bi-polar (Wang et al. 2001).