The gold found on Earth is to a large extent the product of supernovae. Other elements are also created during these violent astrophysical explosions. Karlheinz Langanke and his colleagues at GSI carry out research into the nucleosynthesis process. Here, an important role is played by the super fragment separator; a construction made of huge magnets which acts like a sieve, filtering out the nuclei of interest from a large mixture.
Karlheinz Langanke | GSI Darmstadt, Germany
Karlheinz Langanke is a theoretical physicist and director of research at GSI. In 1980, he earned his doctorate at the University of Münster. Subsequently, with a scholarship from the German Research Foundation, he studied at Caltech, USA, where he later became a member of the faculty. In 1996 he became a professor at the University of Aarhus. Since 2005 he is professor at the TU Darmstadt. He is a member of the Academia Europaea, and received the 2012 Lise Meitner Prize of the European Physical Society.
Sources
Langanke, K., Thielemann, F.; Making the Elements in the Universe, europhysicnews 2013, 44(3), 23-26. DOI: 10.1051/epn/2013304
Langanke, K., Stöcker, H.; Das Universum im Labor, Sterne und Weltraum 2010, 12, 40. www.sterne-und-weltraum.de
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