Re: All Burnt Up

In message <1146614323.676748.280800@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
mccoy@xxxxxxxxxx writes
Hydrogen formed from the energy from the Big Bang. Oxygen was formed
later, by fusion, inside stars. It was expelled when the stars went
supernovae.

Explain in detail how this happened.

Have you got a spare three years? For an explanation in detail you need
to know particle and nuclear physics. (In fact you need to know more
particle and nuclear physics than I do; more that I knew when I was a
new-minted Physics B.Sc.)

For those who don't demand detail, at some point early in the expansion
of the visible universe the matter was present in the form of a
quark-gluon plasma - i.e. it was so hot that not only atoms, and not
only nuclei, but protons and neutrons were not present. (In you heat ice
it turns into water; if you heat water it turns into water vapour; if
you heat water vapour is both ionises and disassociates into hydrogen
and oxygen atoms. If you keep adding energy to the system the atoms
break apart into nucleons, and finally the nucleons dissolve into a
quark-gluon plasma.)

As the universe cooled the quark-gluon plasma condensed into nucleons.
Reactions between these nucleons formed deuterons (Deuterium nuclei),
and also the Helium, and IIRC, Lithium nuclei. The universe cooled
beyond the temperature necessary to create heavier nuclei before it the
process got that far.

Later the universe cooled to the point where electrons recombined with
nuclei to form atoms.

Yet later galaxies, seeded by density fluctuations in the early universe
formed. Within these galaxies gas cloud collapsed to form stars. Stars
initially produce their energy by fusing Hydrogen to Helium, but when
Hydrogen runs short in the centre of stars they become hotter (due to
further gravitational collapse) and start fusing Helium to Carbon.
Subsequent nuclear reactions produce elements up to Iron, especially
Nitrogen, Oxygen, Neon and Magnesium. Elements heavier that Iron are
produced late in the lives of massive stars, partly during supernova
explosions.

Oxygen can be introduced into the interstellar medium during supernova
explosions, or during the mass loss associated with the red giant phase.
--
alias Ernest Major


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