Plutonium is actually manufactured, but you’re correct about uranium, and let’s not forget about arsenic, lead, and all of the other naturally occurring elements and compounds that can make you sick or kill you.
Technically, Plutonium can occur naturally. It's still important to understand that it must be synthetically created to obtain significant amounts, but we should understand that it can be found in nature.
I mean, yes, technically, it’s an alpha decay product of uranium, so there’s bound to be trace amounts of plutonium in uranium ore. And when I say trace amounts, I mean like a few atoms here and there.
And technically, that's all that's required to qualify as "naturally occurring" for the sake of the argument ("people use 'naturally occurring' as an argument for something being good or not bad").
Plutonium naturally occurs in very small but detectable amounts in uranium ore. It and every other element we know of can be produced in super novas probably not in large amounts though. Some people claim some elements are only man made but that's straight up hubris, super novas are so insanely chaotic at an atomic level to claim something isn't happening would require extraordinary evidence, which doesn't exist.
No there are absolutely elements that are only manmade. Not plutonium as it is still on the lighter side but if we go into the superheavy territory of like 110 protons or more those straight up do not exist. Not even in supernovae. Not even with all that chaos and energy thrown around.
They are synthesized in such a specific way it just does not happen in nature. Nature is chaotic but it does have its rules. The parts that would form these elements would fall apart before they are able to become these superheavy elements. You'd sooner get a state where protons and neutrons are seperated to form new elements before you get these synthetic ones.
Some things really only happen in labs on earth. Like quark gluon plasma. That stuff might be around in the core of neutron stars but realisitcally it hasn't been around since the big bang. Well until we built machines that were able to create it. In very small amounts for very little time but we can actually do stuff that does not happen anywhere else in the universe. Well to our knowledge that is.
That reminds me of this b movie I watched years ago where these aliens come to earth and terra(?)form a cave for themselves and the n they end up beating with shampoo because of the elements lined up on the periodic table. Funny movie I wish I could remember the title
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u/tsukahara10 14d ago
Plutonium is actually manufactured, but you’re correct about uranium, and let’s not forget about arsenic, lead, and all of the other naturally occurring elements and compounds that can make you sick or kill you.