What is stardust or asteroids or space "jewelery" made of?
from sopularity_fax@sopuli.xyz to nostupidquestions@lemmy.ca on 13 Nov 19:08
https://sopuli.xyz/post/36670748
from sopularity_fax@sopuli.xyz to nostupidquestions@lemmy.ca on 13 Nov 19:08
https://sopuli.xyz/post/36670748
#nostupidquestions
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One of these things is not like the others.
There are various types of asteroids. There are several phases and caveats. In general, almost all of the material present is from the primordial cloud of material that the Sol system formed from. This would have been a region of cold gas something like what is seen in the pillars of creation image from the Hubble space telescope. This gas was mostly homogenous (the same types of elements distributed throughout). This gas got disturbed and started condensing to form stars. Generally this is dependant on temperature being low enough for elements to condense instead of bounce off each other due to higher energies.
The chaos of this early era caused various formations. Sol mostly dominated these formations. However, many planetesimals formed too. When any body becomes large enough for gravity to make it round, it starts experiencing gravitational differentiation. This means heavier elements collect near the center of the object.
Many collisions broke apart objects like these and exposed various parts. The central metal rich cores of this kind of object is the rare m-type astroid. Any large m-type likely contains more rare mineral wealth than all of what humans have accessed in the entire Holocene. However the most common astroid type is a carbonaceous chondrite which are basically just regular rocks.
The locations of objects in the stellar system determine much about how they have evolved and what their composition is. For instance, the elements in the stellar wind have a temperature. These have an ice line where they freeze as they blow out into space. This is how many objects form and grow in size over time as the ices form the respective bodies.
I could go on but this is long already.
I do not believe there is any regulatory body enforcing the meaning of space jewelry, so it is likely a marketing term with no meaning and is up to you to determine if it has any truth or value. The Earth is an object in space too.
I just meant like if there were space gems of some kind, what might that be? Like in Pokemon there was Star Piece or Stardust etc
Yes and no. The environment produces unique minerals, but these are because of the surrounding physics, like temperature, pressure/near vacuum, time, and radiation. Stuff is different than what you might find on the surface of Earth, but Earth has much of the same if you know where to look. For example, a several kilometers under you right now there is an enormous layer of olivine in the upper mantle. You can find places on the surface where this olivine exists such as the green sand beach on the big island of Hawaii. Olivine forms under a lot of temperature and pressure.
Everything in space in terms of baryonic matter (physical stuff like you and me), is relative to temperature and pressure. If you pulled off the outer layers of Sol for a very long time, you would eventually lower the mass enough that it would turn into a red dwarf. A red dwarf is like the limit for how big a star can be where everything you see is part of the fusion core. That is why red dwarfs are so active, the core is exposed. When a star like Sol goes supernova, most of the hydrogen and helium is still present. Only the core is doing the nuclear fusion thing and nothing goes into the core after it has formed.
If you keep reducing the mass of this red dwarf, you eventually make a brown dwarf. That means it can fuse deuterium, aka heavy hydrogen, but nothing else. Keep going and you’ll get into Jupiter size worlds. Then things solidify into terrestrial worlds at several times the size of Earth. Keep going and you’ll pass Mars, Mercury, Luna, Ceres, and all the way down to small asteroids. Keep going and you’ll get down to atoms, then down to the particle fields.
There is nothing special about any location in the universe. It is only a unique set of constraints that determines the states of materials. The only ones that are difficult to produce from a planetary gravity prison are those that require no influence from gravity. Humans can achieve lower temperatures and pressures than the vacuum of space. We have yet to create the greatest temperatures and pressures possible, but the point is mute because you will never find these materials independent of stellar remnants that would kill you if you approached them.
What is Sol? Like the sun or a star?
The Sun is a star just like any other. The terminology Sol is often used in science fiction and by futurists because Sun is a convoluted term that implies exceptionalism that supports dogmatic stupidity. Sol is a g-type star we happen to exist around. It is not unique or remarkable. There are around a dozen similar stars within 7 parsecs of Sol. By the time we reach any of these, the word Sun will become useless as there are many adolescent biases built into the nomenclature. Human exceptionalism is a fallacy built into many parts of life and culture.
If you were to explore this by writing any kind of science fiction story placed in a future where humans have managed to achieve interstellar colonisation, it quickly becomes blatantly obvious how Sol is a vastly superior descriptor. This simple distinction makes a giant difference on one’s understanding. The word Solar means of-Sol as in Sol-ar. The use of the word Sun as a proper name is a major misnomer that marks our era of primitivism.
Science Fiction is not fantasy. It is a form of social critique, and imagining what the future could be. There is plenty of fantasy nonsense people categorize incorrectly as science fiction, and others that call it Hard Science Fiction. Ultimately, it is about constraining stories within what is possible. There was a big movement along these lines in the 1970s.
But it refers to solar body at the centre of OUR galaxy, correct?
Sagittarius A* is at the center of our galaxy. We are on the outskirts in orbit around the Milky Way. Sol takes around 220 million years to orbit the Milky Way. So in effect, we are on a rock -ish ship already traveling the galaxy. If you have a long enough temporal scope the only real issue is when to get off the ship.
The thing is, complex life really took hold 600 million years ago. So we are working on galactic lap 3 since complex life emerged. The real trick is just surviving.
Preach