Understanding Earth's Elements: The Big Bang Perspective

To properly understand where all elements on Earth came from, it is essential to first learn about human understanding of how the universe started. One of the widely accepted theories is “the Big Bang theory”. The Big Bang theory is a method to explain what the universe was like at the very beginning. Most scientists working in the field of astronomy believe that the universe did have a beginning and its age is finite. One claim that supports this view is that if the universe was infinitely old, there should be stars in every direction possible, either a star or the remains of a star. According to the current understanding, there existed nothing before the Big Bang, but during and after the Big Bang, everything we can imagine sprang into

With the passage of time, the universe rapidly expanded, cooled and thus became less dense than it was at the beginning of the universe. That allowed the formation of the very first atoms, hydrogen and helium. The slight nonuniformity in the density of the universe led to gravity attracting matter and then leading to the formation of dense lumps of matter which grew rapidly as time progressed by attracting even more matter inwards. This process continued until the hydrogen in the huge lumps started to fuse together and release enormous energy which blew all the matter in the nearby surrounding space of what could then be called one of the first “stars”. All the stars in the universe started as a huge lump of hydrogen formed by gravity in a nebula - an area of high abundance of interstellar matter and dust. Through nuclear fusion of hydrogen, heavier elements like helium, lithium, beryllium, etc. until iron, formed in the core of the stars. All the other elements are believed to have originated in violent explosions called

Most stars in the universe are main sequence stars (average mass stars) which begin their life as moderately sized stars, burn their hydrogen for about 10 billion years after which they become “red giants”. Red giants form when the amount of hydrogen in an average star is lower than what is needed for fusion to continue. The outer layers of such stars expand and cool, and their helium cores contract. Over time, the outer layers are shed and the remaining helium core of the now dead star shines as a small white dwarf star. It is the remnant of the