Naked Science Forum

Non Life Sciences => Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology => Topic started by: Pseudoscience-is-malarkey on 24/02/2023 22:29:50

Title: Is it possible for a planet to be highly-highly abundant in magnesium?
Post by: Pseudoscience-is-malarkey on 24/02/2023 22:29:50

My question here is inspired by the findings that 16 Cygni Bb is shockingly high in lithium. Astrophysicists are constantly going back to the drawing boards about planetary limitations and such.

Title: Re: Is it possible for a planet to be highly-highly abundant in magnesium?
Post by: Kryptid on 24/02/2023 23:34:48

Magnesium is already the 8th most abundant element on Earth: https://web.archive.org/web/20110927064201/http://www.gly.uga.edu/railsback/Fundamentals/ElementalAbundanceTableP.pdf

In order for your question to be answered more exactly, you'd need to specify what kind of quantities you are talking about.

Title: Re: Is it possible for a planet to be highly-highly abundant in magnesium?
Post by: evan_au on 25/02/2023 06:44:33

Magnesium is believed to be distributed into space primarily by the explosion of massive stars.
- So if you had a star that is massive enough to burn three Helium-4 nuclei to Magnesium-24...
- But not massive enough to burn Magnesium-24 to Silicon-28...
- Then, when this massive star exploded, it would distribute Magnesium-rich material into the interstellar medium
- From which magnesium-rich planets could form (in theory, if stars of this mass were the major contributor to the material in the subsequent protoplanetary disk).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abundance_of_the_chemical_elements#Universe
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_binding_energy#Nuclear_binding_energy_curve

Title: Re: Is it possible for a planet to be highly-highly abundant in magnesium?
Post by: Pseudoscience-is-malarkey on 25/02/2023 14:54:42

Quote from: Kryptid on 24/02/2023 23:34:48

Magnesium is already the 8th most abundant element on Earth

I didn't know that.