No Gold for Alchemy

 Alchemists of the world. I bring you bad news. Gold can not be made on earth. I t can only be me in the heart of a large dying star.

The Sun is a star that we are awfully close to. It is only medium size, not even big enough for gold making. All the gold there is came from larger stars far away. The biggest stars die in a massive explosion and spread their contents far abroad. 

When stars are born, they are only light and simple gas. Then gravity goes to work. Gravity is the force that pulls all things together. You cannot jump off the earth because gravity is pulling you and the earth together. 

The more stuff there is the stronger the gravity. It not only pulls things together, but it keeps getting stronger the closer things are. This strengthening never stops, and things are pushed together harder and harder, until they are the closest, they can be.

Simple gas is eventually pulled together so hard that it is squeezed into something else. First it is squeezed into a slightly harder gas. Energy and Mass can be turned into each other. The next slightly harder gas does not come out even. As much of the simple gas that can be is changed becoming slightly harder gas, but in the process, something is left over.  It all does not fit. This something left over is energy.

This energy pushes out the star and acts as a balance keeping gravity from squeezing the star flat. The manufacturing process is called fusion. The process keeps moving up the ladder, making denser gas at every turn with continued energy release. Gravity pulls in. Energy pushes out.

Eventually all the gas will have been converted into something solid. At this point the star has run out of its primary building material and is starting to die. It starts to eat itself, solids into denser solids, and up the complexity ladder. (The complexity latter is shown in the periodic table.)

Each atom has electrons and protons orbiting around a neutron. It only looks solid to things much bigger, such as us. Atoms are exceedingly small compared to us but there are a lot of them together.

The more complex solids have an increasing number of protons and electron. (The periodic table lists the number of protons and electrons in each atom.)

The star can only go so far eating itself thru fusion. The fusion process continues up thru iron but can go no further. Fusing anything beyond iron requires more energy than is available and the star starts to collapse. The way it ends depends on the size of the star. If the star is bigger than three times the size of our sun, it starts to explode. During the explosion additional energy is released and fusion continues. Only then can the star make the most complex matter, such as gold. The explosion is called a super nova and is strong enough to spread the star stuff far across  space.

 Stars that are bigger than 1.5 times the sun, but less than 3 times, become Neutron stars. This is made of atoms smashed flat so that they are all neutrons with nothing in orbit. The open space is smashed out and it ends up being superdense. 

 If the dying star was more than 3 times the size of the sun it becomes a black hole. This is something so dense that not even light can escape.

Stars the size of our sun, and up 1.5 times, become red giants. This is much larger but dead and hollow. When our sun becomes a red giant, the inner solar system will be swallowed up.