Do All Minerals And Elements On Earth Really Come From The Stars?

[Mintaka]

Gold, silver etc......

 

Are we really made of star material?

[Essay]

Well the elements do (although decay products might not qualify); but as for the MINERALS....

 

This is fascinating and has many implications (certainly for detecting life on other planets), I think.

Scientific American had an article about a year ago on this topic.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=evolution-of-minerals

Earth’s diverse mineralogy developed over the eons, as new mineral-generating processes came into play.

Remarkably, more than half of the mineral species on Earth owe their existence to life, which began transforming the planet’s geology more than two billion years ago.

It's worth a visit to your library.

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In space you can find about 40-50 minerals that will form naturally.

On planets you can find about 400-500 minerals that will form naturally.

On Earth (and maybe all planets with evolving life) you can find about 4000-5000 minerals that have formed "naturally" ...if you count the processes associated with evolving life to be natural.

 

~Thank you Gaia.

 

p.s. ...but yes, we really are star-stuff (thanks Carl S.)... including the elements-- all the atoms --that make up the minerals... and us.

[sanctus]

Everything heavier than Iron comes from exploding stars...before normal reactions (fusions) have enough energy

[Mintaka]

great, thank you..... I did read that gold is made by stars , only their death explosions can generate the heat to create this metal.

No wonder we put such value on it..

 

I will go and check that link out now. B)

[Moontanman]

Actually all elements are made inside of stars except for hydrogen, some of the helium and a very tiny amount of the lithium, the rest is forged inside of stars or formed in nova and spread around by nova events.

[CraigD]

Everything heavier than Iron comes from exploding stars...before normal reactions (fusions) have enough energy

True that, but I think it understates how few elements existed before they were synthesized in stars. According to best current theory, before there were stars, where were no elements with atomic numbers greater than 4 – that is, there was nothing but (by atomic number and name) 1-hydrogen, 2-helium, 3-lithium, and 4-beryllium, and none of the beryllium had enough neutrons to be stable, so nearly all decayed before the first stars formed. 26-Iron and beyond are heavyweights in comparison. (see more here)

 

We and every other living thing on Earth are made mainly out of 6-carbon, 1-hydrogen, 8-oxygen, 7-nitrogen – CHON – so with the exception of hydrogen (which only makes up about 10% of us, by mass), we don’t just contain some star-stuff, we’re almost entirely stars-stuff.