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Can anybody say which kind of function on these graphics? Distribution of atoms in Solar systems looks like cos(m): https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/comm

• marcosdumay 9y ago
  Star clusters look like normal. Exoplanets looks like 2 normals added up (probably because of 2 different detection procedures). Distribution of atoms in the Solar System is the weird one. No idea what it is.
  • MereInterest 9y ago
    Yeah, the distribution of elements is weird and wonky because it depends on a lot of details about nuclear physics. First off, nuclei with odd number of protons or neutrons are less stable than nuclei with even numbers. That is what causes the staggered bumps every-other element. The low-mass region is largely determined by stellar nucleosynthesis. After helium, largely works by shoving more helium atoms on. So, to you get lots of Carbon-12 and Oxygen-16, which are kind of like 3 or 4 helium nuclei stuck together. The heavier regions get really weird, because those depend on the r-process. Some astrophysical events spit out heaps and loads of neutrons, which stick to nuclei. You go way the heck away from stability, then beta-decay back once things calm down. What products you get depend on the reaction rates of hundreds of possible reactions, few of which can be experimentally measured in a lab, because there is no way to make that strong of a neutron source. Explaining that distribution is a topic of many, many dissertations, and does not in any way reduce down to a simple law. Source: am nuclear physicist