At about the time I was a student in the 1930's, it had become increasingly evident that all the elements existing on the Earth today had already been discovered. Scientists then began "discovering" new elements by means of their artificial synthesis and some of the man-made elements found important military as well as industrial applications. I have often wondered, however, if the importance of these artificial elements may not have been overly emphasized by contemporary scientists for their practical applications. It seemed to me that these man-made elements were destined to play an important role du ring the second half of the 20th century in the study of the origin of the elements in the Universe. This subject of study, which dates back to the days of ancient Greek philoso phers, may be regarded as the most fundamental in the entire compass of our modetn science. Since I joined the faculty of the University of Arkansas in the early 1950's, I have had the good fortune of being able to maintain a long-range research project, the ultimate goal of which was to elucidate the origin of the elements. I have presented the results from these and related investigations on numerous occasions. While serving as a tour speaker of the American Chemical Society for many years, I have had the privilege of visiting many ofthe local sections to present a lecture on the origin ofthe elements.
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ISBN-13
978-3-642-68667-2 (9783642686672)
DOI
10.1007/978-3-642-68667-2
Schweitzer Klassifikation
1. Introduction.- 2. Abundance of the Elements.- 2.1. Mendeléeff and the Periodic Law.- 2.2. The Ideas of Crookes.- 2.3. Richards and Atomic Weights.- 2.4. Clarke's Numbers.- 2.5. The Rule of Harkins.- 2.6. The 1930 Estimates by Noddack.- 2.7. The 1938 Estimates by Goldschmidt.- 2.8. Geochemical Classification of the Elements.- 2.9. The 1956 Estimates by Suess and Urey.- 3. Elements 43 and 61 in Nature.- 3.1. The All-Present Theory of Noddack.- 3.2. Discoveries of Elements 43 and 61 by Artificial Means.- 3.3. Magic Numbers.- 3.4. Technetium in Stars.- 3.5. Long-Lived Isotopes of Technetium.- 3.6. Reported Discoveries of Technetium in Terrestrial Minerals.- 3.7. Absence of Primordial Technetium in the Earth's Crust.- 3.8. Molybdenum-99 in Non-Irradiated Uranium Salts.- 3.9. Technetium in Pitchblende.- 3.10. Promethium-147 in Non-Irradiated Uranium Salts.- 3.11. Promethium in Pitchblende.- 4. The Oklo Phenomenon.- 4.1. Discovery of Spontaneous Fission.- 4.2. Plutonium-239 in Nature.- 4.3. Large-Scale Nuclear Processes on the Earth.- 4.4. Xenon Isotopes in Radioactive Minerals.- 4.5. Radioactive Strontium Isotopes in Pitchblende.- 4.6. Iodine-129 in Pitchblende.- 4.7. Radioactive Iodine Isotopes in Aqueous Uranium Solutions.- 4.8. Resonance Capture of Neutrons in Pitchblende.- 4.9. The Theory of Natural Reactors.- 4.10. The Uranium-238 to -235 Ratio in Nature.- 4.11. The Uranium-234 to -238 Ratio in Nature.- 4.12. Discovery of the Oklo Reactor.- 4.13. Promethium-147 in the Oklo Reactor.- 4.14. Plutonium-239 in the Oklo Reactor.- 4.15. Technetium-99 in the Oklo Reactor.- 4.16. Search for Additional Natural Reactors.- 5. Synthesis of the Elements in Stars.- 5.1. Discovery of Helium in the Sun.- 5.2. The Concept of Frozen Thermodynamic Equilibria.- 5.3. DeficientElements.- 5.4. The Rate of Thermonuclear Reactions.- 5.5. The C-N Cycle and the Proton-Proton Chain.- 5.6. Synthesis of the Elements in a Neutron-Rich Environment.- 5.7. The Big-Bang Theory of Gamow.- 5.8. The Polyneutron Hypothesis of Mayer and Teller.- 5.9. The Proton-Neutron Ratio Prior to the Big-Bang.- 5.10. Theories on the Evolution of Stars.- 5.11. Supernovae and Californium-254.- 5.12. Synthesis of the Elements in Stars.- 5.13. The e-Process According to B2FH.- 5.14. The s- and r-Processes According to B2 FH.- 5.15. Cosmic Black-Body Radiation.- 5.16. Pulsars or Neutron Stars.- 5.17. The World of Antimatter.- 5.18. Possible Climatic Effect of Supernova Explosion.- 5.19. Search for Neutrinos from the Sun.- 5.20. Temperature of the Sun.- 5.21. Further Studies on Nucleosynthesis in Stars.- 6. Plutonium-244 in the Early Solar System.- 6.1. Rutherford and Soddy's View on the Transuranium Elements.- 6.2. Rutherford's Calculation of the Age of the Elements.- 6.3. The Concept of Extinct Radioactivity.- 6.4. Half-life of Iodine-129 and the Age of the Elements.- 6.5. Excess 129Xe in Meteorites.- 6.6. The Plutonium-244 Hypothesis.- 6.7. Chronology of Nucleosynthesis.- 6.8. Plutonium-244 in the Early Solar System.- 6.9. Unsolved Problems in Xenology.- 6.10. Search for Superheavy Elements in Nature.- 6.11. Superheavy Elementary Particles and Quarks in Nature.- 7. Isotopic Anomalies in the Early Solar System.- 7.1. The Origin of Lithium, Beryllium and Boron.- 7.2. Isotopic Anomalies in Meteorites.- 7.3. A Unified Theory of Isotopic Anomalies.- 7.4. Neon.- 7.5. Argon.- 7.6. Krypton.- 7.7. Xenon.- 7.8. Barium.- 7.9. Gadolinium.- 7.10. Other Elements.- Appendices.- Appendix I. Goldschmidt's table of the abundance of the elements (Originally compiled in 1938 and up-datedto 1954).- Appendix II. The 1956 Suess-Urey abundance table for the individual nuclei.- Appendix III. The 1965 abundance table compiled by Virginia Trimble.
