Do very heavy elements form only in Supernovae? ?

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TylerFromNE

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I was wondering about naturally-occurring heavy elements like Uranium - do they form only when a star goes supernova, or is it possible that they might be formed by other means, such as in a proto-galactic accretion disk near the supermassive black hole, or in the cores of the largest hypergiant stars? Or possibly galactic collisions?

If it is only in a supernova, that must mean that our solar system was formed from the remnant nebula of a supernova, right? Or could it have been from a distant supernova from which the heavy elements on earth somehow traversed a great distance?
 
heavy elements probably form in other events, but not to the same extent as they form in a supernova.

In a star two large nuclei having high enough kinetic energy to fuse is rare and the chances they will collide is even more unlikely, whereas in a supernova it is much much more likely to occur because nuclei in a supernova have very high average kinetic energy.

So it probably does happen, but compared to a supernova the amount formed in other events is negligible.
 
The only way we know of so far for elements heavy than iron to form is via a supernova explosion. The materials in our own solar system were the result of not one, but two supernova explosions.

Here is a link to a picture that shows some of the structure in our galactic neighborhood.
http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2003/05/images/planar.jpg
 
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