Z-pinch creation of heavy metals?

[tholden]

If you were to believe the idea of planets forming from swirling masses of solar material, you'd figure any heavy metals would be at the planet's core. Likewise with the idea of diamonds forming from coal or some such under quadrillions of pounds of pressure for quadrillions of years when the quadrillions of years turn out to be fiction...

You could try to explain gold and lead near the Earth's surface by impact events but then you'd have to explain how an asteroid would even contain such materials.

Has anybody given any thought as to how much of the heavy and hard stuff we find near the Earth's surface might have been created by plasma phenomena or electrical activity?

[Solar]

If you were to believe the idea of planets forming from swirling masses of solar material, you'd figure any heavy metals would be at the planet's core.

Based on what? Wouldn't the presence of "heavy and hard stuff" near the Earth's surface only be an oddity *IF* the assumption of 'figuring' heavy metals would be at the planets core where presumed to be correct? Has the gravitational formation of the planets from collapsing cosmic debris been demonstrated to be correct or has it been reified so much that we automatically operate from it's premise and presume that what does not fit that scenario is peculiar?

[Brigit Bara]

Wouldn't Sandia Lab have had trouble with Nitrogen and Oxygen transmuting in the presence of that discharge? I am just wondering.

[rduke]

Are you talking about the Z-machine?

I am pretty sure that the discharge takes place in a vacuum chamber... plus I think the main part of the machine is in a big pool of coolant.

[Brigit Bara]

I forgot they did that in a vacuum. Too bad.

"Lookin for transmutation
In all the wrong places..."

[Aidan Weisz]

Considering the high temperature a Z machine emits, I believe it has a lot to do with metal formation on the earth's surface.