SoylentNews

NPC-131072 writes:

From Universe Today

Each of us is, as it says in Max Ehrmann's famous poem "Desiderata", a child of the universe. It speaks metaphorically about our place in the cosmos, but it turns out to be a very literal truth. Our bodies contain the stuff of stars and galaxies, and that makes us children of the cosmos. To be more precise, we are carbon-based life forms. All life on Earth is based on the element carbon-12. It turns out this stuff is a critical gateway to life. So, how did the universe come up with enough of it to make you and me and all the life on our planet? Astrophysicists and nuclear physicists think they have an answer by using a supercomputer simulation of what happens to create carbon. As it turns out, it's not very easy.

The recipe for carbon-12 requires a pressure cooker and a lot of source material. The environment inside a star or during a stellar collision or an explosion provides the pressure cooker. The ingredients inside are helium-4 atoms and a theoretically forbidden nucleus of something called beryllium-8 (8Be). Put them all together and eventually, you get carbon-12. Sounds simple, right?

Well, not exactly. There's no way to replicate this recipe in the lab to test it and prove the process. That's because you need temperatures and pressures that exist only inside stars. To understand why we can't reproduce the birth of carbon, here's a simple outline of a complex process that astrophysicists think is happening.

See also:
On the Origin of Life's Most Crucial Isotope
Researchers reveal the origin story for carbon-12, a building block for life

Journal Reference:
Otsuka, T., Abe, T., Yoshida, T. et al. α-Clustering in atomic nuclei from first principles with statistical learning and the Hoyle state character [open] Nat Commun 13, 2234 (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-022-29582-0

Original Submission