Posted on 09/14/2026 12:04:34 PM PDT by MtnClimber
Explanation: The hydrogen in your body and present in every molecule of water came from the Big Bang. There are no other appreciable sources of hydrogen in the universe. The carbon in your body was made by nuclear fusion in the interior of stars, as was the oxygen. Much of the iron in your body was made during supernovas of stars that occurred long ago and far away. The gold in your jewelry was likely made from neutron stars during collisions that may have been visible as short-duration gamma-ray bursts or gravitational wave events. Elements like phosphorus and copper are present in our bodies in only small amounts but are essential to the functioning of all known life. The featured periodic table is color coded to indicate humanity's best guess as to the nuclear origin of all known elements. The sites of nuclear creation of some elements, such as copper, are not really well known and are continuing topics of observational and computational research.
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These are the only ones of which the news has come to Harvard
And there may be many others, but they haven’t been discovered
I was a chemistry major. I can see that thing in my sleep.
Neat.
I miss science that you had to prove. :-(
Bubble chart of the relative abundances of the most abundant nuclides. Hydrogen-1 (large blue circle) is the most abundant nuclide and comprises 74% of the ordinary matter of the universe. Color indicates nucleosynthetic process of origin: Blue=Big Bang nucleosynthesis, green=dying low-mass stars, yellow=exploding massive stars.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abundance_of_the_chemical_elements
Yaay Tom Lehrer! :-)
but where was the materials before the bang, stars, etc? Otherwise, I don’t really think the table tells us much about where the elements originated from. there is much science thinks it’s solved or knows but really is just pieces of info, or guesses, and not real answers.
It’s hard to believe that all those elements could be created by star deaths and somehow all come together to make planets like earth and Mars, etc. And all in only 14 billion years. The individual elements would have to travel vast distances at low velocities, find each other and coalesce in gravitational collapse. Into planets around a star. This is as likely to happen as the magical appearance of many amino acids in a permeable membrane to create a living cell by accident. I’m not automatically against these accidental creation ideas I just don’t see a mechanism for it to happen in 14 billion years.
Aren’t some of those in the bottom rows man-made?
Except for her. She came from Planet Claire. I know she came from there.
And they all orbit the Sun in almost exactly the same direction as it spins! It’s amazing!
The really cool part is that none of this can, or has to be proved - and you can still buy things with the grant money.
No one ever dies there.
No one has a head.
Me neither.
Just who decided on the 14 billion?
G-d made us, gave us, A LOT of curiosity. Some of this curiosity led to The Hubble Space Telescope, and the more recent James Webb Space Telescope.
Hubble can "see" a certain distance into the Universe. The Webb Telescope can "see" even further, deeper into the Cosmos.
Some recent Webb observations and discoveries are items that "shouldn't be there" by the most current theories. Some "scientists" are trying to maintain their theories, trying to account for this new information, phenomenon.
Other scientists are saying "well, back to the drawing board!"
What is out there, beyond the limitations of the new Webb Space Telescope? I may not live to enjoy those discoveries, but it will be fun.
Didn’t Einstein say something to the effect that there are two things of which there is an infinite quantity in the universe, hydrogen and stupidity, but he wasn’t sure about hydrogen?
I am not sure about Hydrogen either. Stupidity I can see in abundance.
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