- 2839 - ELEMENTS - how were they created? Our Universe started with only 4 elements. We look around Earth and we can find 116 elements. How did all that star dust get here? How did life come up out of these elements? You are really made of stardust!
--------------------------- 2839 - ELEMENTS - how were they created?
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- There are 116 elements in the periodic table today. When astronomers go to measure the amount of each element in the Universe they come up with 74% being hydrogen and 24% being helium, and the remaining 2% being all the other 114 elements. Only the four lightest elements were created in the Big Bang. The rest were created in the fusion of exploding stars called supernovae.
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- One second after the Big Bang the element creation started and after 3 minutes it stopped. At 10^-13 seconds the Universe had expanded and cooled down to 10^13 degrees Kelvin.
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- This was cool enough to allow the Strong Nuclear Force that had separated out from the other three forces to collect quarks in sets of threes into protons and neutrons. Anti-quarks were also collected into anti-protons and anti-neutrons. Somehow, after 1 second the matter and anti-matter had finished annihilating each other and a residue of matter was left over. You came from that residue. But, wait 4 billion years.
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- In the next 3 minutes the four lightest elements were formed out of this residue matter. Let’s get familiar with the structure of these elements:
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------------ the element ------------ the nucleus --------------- the atom
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------------ hydrogen -------------- 1 proton ----------------- 1 electron
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------------ helium ---------------- 2 protons -----------------2 electrons
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------------ lithium ----------------- 3 protons ----------------- 2 electrons 1st shell
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------------------------------------------------------------------------ 1 electron 2nd shell
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------------ beryllium -------------- 4 protons ----------------- 2 electrons 1st shell
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------------------------------------------------------------------------ 2 electrons 2nd shell
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- We need only pay attention to the nuclei because the neutral atoms with electrons did not form until 380,000 years later, 10^13 seconds later. Only the positively charged nuclei and free electrons were in the cosmic plasma up until that time. The electrons were free and moving too fast to be caught by the attractive electromagnetic force between positive protons and the negative electrons.
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- To learn what happened at 380,000 years see Review 823 “ Sound Waves and the Cosmic Microwave Background”. The Strong Nuclear Force had also formed neutrons out of 3 quarks, and electron, and a neutrino. These neutrons fused with protons and formed isotopes of the elements. Neutrons are neutral and add weight to the element but do not change the nature of the element. Here is the structure of the nuclei with neutrons:
------------ the element ----------------------------- the nucleus
------------ hydrogen -------------------------- 1 proton
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------------ hydrogen (H2), deuterium ------ 1 proton ------- 1 neutron
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------------ hydrogen (H3) , tritium ---------- 1 proton ----- 2 neutrons
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------------ helium --------------------------- 2 protons
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------------ helium(He3) -------------------- 2 protons --------- 1 neutron
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------------ helium (He4) -------------------- 2 protons --------- 2 neutrons
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------------ lithium (Li6) --------------------- 3 protons --------- 3 neutrons
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------------ lithium (Li7) --------------------- 3 protons --------- 4 neutrons
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------------ beryllium (Be7) ------------------ 4 protons ----------3 neutrons
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- The isotopes tritium, lithium, and beryllium are radioactive and decay into other elements with a specific half-life. Hydrogen and Helium(H4) are the two most stable elements. Let’s see how they were created in the first 3 minutes:
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- Two protons are positively charged and naturally repel each other due to the electromagnetic force. However, when the temperatures are hot enough, or the kinetic energies and velocities high enough two protons can smash together with such force as to overcome the repelling electromagnetic force. They smash into each other to where the Strong Nuclear Force can take over and fuse the protons together into a helium nuclei.
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- One proton is a hydrogen nuclei. Fusing hydrogen into helium is what powers the Sun and all the stars. When fusion occurs each time some mass is lost and converted into energy according to E=mc^2.
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- A proton and a neutron fuse together to become a deuterium nuclei, (H2).
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- A proton-neutron pair, deuterium (H2), and a neutron fuse together to become a tritium nuclei (H3).
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- A tritium nuclei, 1 proton-2 neutrons, and proton fuse together to form helium (H4). Helium(H4), 2 protons-2 neutrons, is a stable gas and it does not easily react with anything else. However, under high temperatures and pressures further fusion can occur.
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- A Helium (H4) and a tritium(H3) nuclei fuse together and they form Lithium nuclei (Li7), 3 protons-4 neutrons.
- Beryllium (Be7), 4 protons - 3 neutrons, and Lithium (Li7) are not stable. They are radioactive. Beryllium decays into Lithium (Li7) within a half life of 53 days. Tritium decays into Helium (H3) with a half-life of 12 years.
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- Therefore no Beryllium or Tritium formed in the first 3 minutes of the Big Bang exist today. They do exist but they had to be recently formed much later in the fusion of a supernova.
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- Each time a fusion occurs energy is released. The temperature at the core of the Sun is 15,500,000 degrees Kelvin. The pressure is 340,000,000,000 atmospheres ( The pressure on the surface of the Earth is 1 atmosphere.) The Sun is releasing fusion energy not unlike what occurred after the Big Bang.
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- Hydrogen fuses into Deuterium which fuses with another hydrogen to form helium (H3) and that in turn fuses into another hydrogen to form helium (H4). Each fusion reaction releases energy in the form of Gamma Ray photons. The high energy photons scatter and bounce around to eventually exit the surface of the Sun as infrared, visible and ultraviolet radiation that warms and lights our planet.
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- Forth grade math is all you need to calculate that 25 % of the Universe should be helium and 75% is hydrogen. It takes 4 protons to make 1 helium nuclei, counting the 2 protons that are inside the neutrons. A neutron is a proton plus an electron and a neutrino. A free neutron will decay a proton in an average of 15 minutes, unless it is captured in a nucleus. That is why protons outnumber neutrons by 7 to 1.
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- The Sun fuses hydrogen into helium:
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------------------ The mass of 4 hydrogen nuclei = 6.693*10^-24 kilograms
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------------------ The mass of 1 helium nuclei = 6.645 * 10^-27 kilograms
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------------------ The loss of mass due to fusion = 0.048 * 10^-27 kilograms
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- This is a very small amount of mass that is converted into energy. It is equivalent to only 0.7% or the mass of a single hydrogen nuclei. Using E=mc^2 we can calculate the amount of energy from this amount of mass.
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------------------ Energy = (0.048*10^-27) * ( 3*10^8 )^2 = 4.3*10^-12 kg*m^2/sec^2
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- This too is a very small amount of energy. However, the Sun is a very large amount of mass. In total it is converting 600,000,000 tons of hydrogen into helium every second.
If you converted the mass of one penny into pure energy you would get 625,000,000 kilowatt-hours of energy.
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- Actually, the Universe is not entirely hydrogen and helium. The percentage by mass is more like 74% and 24% with just 2% left over for all the other elements. The four elements described above hung around the Universe for 600,000,000 years.
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- Finally the denser regions had enough gravitational pull to gather the mass needed to ignite a star. The stars were born. Because the Universe was so much denser at that time the stars were big. Big stars have enormous gravity and burn their nuclear fuel very quickly, in less that 10,000,000 years.
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- The same fusion occurs in the core of these stars, hydrogen to helium. But, the stars are not expanding and cooling like the Big Bang was and gravity can continue to work at the center of stars and higher level elements will be fused together.
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- Helium into carbon, carbon into oxygen, oxygen into silicon, silicon into iron and iron stops the process. It takes more energy to fuse iron than it gives up. Once there is no more fusion there is no more radiation and there is no more pressure to stop gravity from collapsing the star completely.
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- Within 1 second the massive star collapses into its core creating a giant rebound and shockwave that blasts out, back into space. The core that remains turns into a Black Hole.
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- The shockwave blasts into in falling gas and interstellar gas to create even heavier elements than iron. All of these elements enter interstellar space to be gathered up by a next generation star and the process starts all over again.
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- These supernovae have happened enough times in the Universe to have created the 2% of the Universe mass in the heavier elements. The astronomers call them all “metals”. A “metal” is any element heavier than helium. Our Sun is considered a metal-rich star.
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- Our Universe started with only 4 elements. We look around Earth and we can find 116 elements. How did all that star dust get here? How did life come up out of these elements? You are really made of stardust!
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------------------------------------- Other Reviews about the elements:
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- 2150 -
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- 2069 - The laws of physics are supposed to be symmetrical in time and space. However, there are things that break space symmetry. Time symmetry never breaks. Quantum computers require atoms to exist in entangled states.
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- 1757 - How do stars create energy? How do they create the elements . The Big Bang created only a few elements, mostly hydrogen and helium. Our Sun will sustain fusion of hydrogen into helium for 10 billion years. Somehow supernovae explosions have produced all the heavier elements like iron, gold, and silver. Our most powerful particle accelerators still cannot do that.
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- 1644 - California's green energy and how the rare earth metals are running our knowledge economy. This reviews tells you what the rare earth metals are and how we get them.
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- 1297 - There are 92 natural elements. Our human bodies are made up of a few dozens of these. We are 61% oxygen and 22% carbon.
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- 1154 - What was created in the first 3 minutes of the Universe? After that we have to wait another 100,000,000 years for the stars to create more elements.
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- 1153 - Where did the elements come from? The heavier elements all came from stars dying. From ashes to ashes. Everything formed from the multiple generations of stars that will eventually cool and go dark.
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- September 23, 2020 825 2839
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--------------------- --- Thursday, September 24, 2020 ---------------------------
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