Comprehensive Reading
What could have happened if the new evidence about the formation of the heaviest
Instructions: Read the given passages and answer the questions that follow. This activity
aims to practice your analysis on scientific articles, specifically about the basic formation of
elements.
“Heaviest Elements Did Not Form from Supernova”
Source: Physics Today (Frebel and Beers 2018)
Until now it is accepted that heaviest elements formed from a supernova. However,
scientists Anna Frebel from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge
and Timothy C. Beers from the University of Notre Dame in Indiana have found evidence
contrary to that belief.
A supernova explosion happens when a star dies. This explosion, like any other
explosion, would generate enough heat but in this case, such heat would aid the formation
of elements. Since the lighter elements up until Iron can take form from normal stars, there
are still questions about how the elements after Iron have taken form to which most studies
proposed to be from supernovae.
From the study of Anna Frebel and Timothy Beers, heaviest elements tend to form
in an environment filled with free neutrons. This is vital because these free neutrons would
be captured eventually into an existing nucleus making it heavier. The new element will not
be this heavier nucleus but the one formed after this nucleus decays. Such decay would
become stable and thus becomes this new, heavier element with a very short lifespan of a
millisecond.
The big revelation was that such an event with enough energy can only happen
during a neutron-star merging. Neutron-star merger is when two stars collide due to
gravitational pull and results in a much bigger explosion than a standard supernova.
Questions:
1. What is the major finding of Anna Frebel and Timothy Beers’ 2018 study?
2. Why do you think their finding is important to the field of scientific education?
3.
elements had not been discovered?
Comprehensive Reading
Instructions: Read the given passages and answer the questions that follow. This activity
aims to practice your analysis on scientific articles, specifically about the basic formation of
elements.
“Heaviest Elements Did Not Form from Supernova”
Source: Physics Today (Frebel and Beers 2018)
Until now it is accepted that heaviest elements formed from a supernova. However,
scientists Anna Frebel from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge
and Timothy C. Beers from the University of Notre Dame in Indiana have found evidence
contrary to that belief.
A supernova explosion happens when a star dies. This explosion, like any other
explosion, would generate enough heat but in this case, such heat would aid the formation
of elements. Since the lighter elements up until Iron can take form from normal stars, there
are still questions about how the elements after Iron have taken form to which most studies
proposed to be from supernovae.
From the study of Anna Frebel and Timothy Beers, heaviest elements tend to form
in an environment filled with free neutrons. This is vital because these free neutrons would
be captured eventually into an existing nucleus making it heavier. The new element will not
be this heavier nucleus but the one formed after this nucleus decays. Such decay would
become stable and thus becomes this new, heavier element with a very short lifespan of a
millisecond.
The big revelation was that such an event with enough energy can only happen
during a neutron-star merging. Neutron-star merger is when two stars collide due to
gravitational pull and results in a much bigger explosion than a standard supernova.
Questions:
1. What is the major finding of Anna Frebel and Timothy Beers’ 2018 study?
2. Why do you think their finding is important to the field of scientific education?
3. What could have happened if the new evidence about the formation of the heaviest
elements had not been discovered?