Heavy Element Surprise

Abstract

Astrophysics and cosmology produce continually surprises. The latest surprise that I know of relates to astrophysics.  The standard view about generation of elements  heavier than  Fe is  based r-process but   no convincing model exists. Even the generation of elements heavier than H, He and Be  produced in Big Bang is poorly understood and the hypothesis is that so called population III stars were the first step. Unfortunately, this population  has no  identified members, which of course might due their short age. The surprising finding was that a population II star HE 1327-2326  contains  unusually large amount of Zinc heavier that iron. This looks very strange since elements heavier than Fe  should be produced much later. The proposal is that these stars collapse in neutron stars in asymmetric manner by generating jets so that the stars formed along jets would  receive much more heavier elements. TGD based vision about formation of galaxies, stars, and even planets relies of a cosmic network of magnetic flux tubes analogous to blood circulation. This network  could make formation of galaxies a coherent process (due to dark matter as hierarchy of phases with effective Planck constant h_eff=nh₀) involving transfer of matter along flux tubes in cosmological scales.  Correlations in cosmic scales are predicted: mention only "Axis-of-Evil".  Dark nuclear physics with much smaller scale of nuclear binding energy can explain "cold fusion" and could be associated with the pre-stellar phases. Dark nuclear reactions would heat the matter to temperatures making possible ordinary nuclear fusion in stellar cores.  Population III stars could correspond  to  these pre-stellar objects.