[extropy-chat] Qualia Bet.

[Reason]

My graduate simulation work on Pop III stars, from formation to late life
core ignition events, demonstrated that they had a significantly higher mass
function, and much larger stars may be stable (up to 200-500 Msol).
Consequently, the population burns much faster than Pop II. They explode
much more readily too. Smaller Pop III stars are very long-lived, however;
you'd expect to see them everywhere today if they existed in any significant
number, with photospheric metallicities much the same as when they formed.
Since we don't, this is another argument for the high mass function.  You
can build Pop II metallicities from scratch in n*10^6 years, where 1 < n <
100, depending on your mass function.

Reason
  -----Original Message-----
  From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org
[mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org]On Behalf Of Robert Bradbury
  Sent: Monday, November 28, 2005 9:09 AM
  To: ExI chat list
  Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] Qualia Bet.


  Adding to Amara's comment...

  Since we are detecting supernova's out to 10+ billion light years, it is
clear that the heavier elements synthesized through the r&s-processes that
Amara points out have been around in the Universe for quite some time
(probably 2+ times the age of our solar system).  The creation of elements
heavier than iron through the r(rapid)-process comes from stars which go
supernova while the evolution of those elements derived from the
s(slow)-process takes place in lower mass (< 8 M_sun) stars.  But the lower
mass stars which are quite abundant today are going to take some time
(billions of years) to build up large quantities of s-process elements.
  Most stars which we see *are* evolving relatively large quantities of
C/N/O as they are essential elements in the natural fusion processes that
take place in stars.  Of course these are only distributed into the galaxy
to seed other stars/solar systems late in stellar lifetimes when they go
through red-giant or nova/supernova phases.  So C/N/O as well as heavier
elements largely came from stars similar to or heavier than our sun in mass
which "died" billions of years ago.  The discussions which are interesting
are what are the minimal element abundances necessary on planets for life to
evolve.  I'll always toss into the mix that it seems that evolution (nature)
is clever enough to work around most constraints with respect to element
abundances so long as there is carbon around and you have temperatures which
can allow the formation of complex carbon based structures.  Worth noting is
that carbon is one of the more abundant elements in the universe (after you
discard H & He).

  Robert

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