Wednesday Colloquia

Nucleosynthesis and the limits of the periodic table

by Prof. Sourendu Gupta (ICTS)

Wednesday, September 25, 2024 from to (Asia/Kolkata)
at AG-66 and via YouTube webinar
Description
All the Hydrogen, and much of the Helium and Lithium in the universe were produced in the first minutes of history. The heavier elements, until Iron, are produced in stars. But elements heavier than that, including several that are necessary to the human body, are produced in rare events like the collision of two neutron stars. I speculate that the production of these elements could involve monstrously large nuclei lying well beyond the limits of the periodic table. This new pathway could have multi-messenger signals for future astronomical platforms.