Esther Inglis-Arkell reports that scientists from the University of Chicago have taken a look at the Curious Marie, a bit of meteorite containing perhaps the most valuable ceramic in the world. These ceramic elements can tell us whether the early universe created heavy particles-without containing any of those elements. The journal Science Advances contains images of an unremarkable-looking rock. This meteorite contains the makings of an important discovery. It tells us that curium was definitely present in the early universe, despite the fact that it contains no curium. Curium is tough to find anywhere. It was discovered in 1944, when it was manufactured by sending helium nuclei rocketing into plutonium. Up until now, we knew curium mainly as a human-made element.
Even when it was manufactured, it did not stick around for long. Curium-242 has a half life of 162 days. And while curium-247 has a much longer half-life of 15.6 million years, that is not much when compared to the life of a universe. This made the plight of astrophysicists, who believed that massive star explosions during the early universe might have made curium and other heavy elements, very difficult. This belief started in the 1980s, but it took a long time for anyone to find proof. Any curium that might have been created during the early universe would be long gone by the time we got hold of a meteorite. Although curium-247 does not vanish, it decays into uranium-235. Most meteorites make it impossible to distinguish which uranium-235 is a product of curium decay and which is just uranium.
The Curious Marie is different. It is an inclusion, a fragment of older rock inside an existing rock, which is made of mostly of calcium and aluminum. These inclusions are known to have low amounts of uranium. These amounts are so low that a small increase of uranium, in this case a mere 6% increase, can only be explained by the fact that uranium is the decay product of curium.
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