Elements created by nucleosynthesis

Answer 1

The only element that was formed in the big bang was hydrogen.

However, in this compact and extremely hot area it was possible for nucleosynthesis to occur. For about three minutes, helium and a small amount of lithium (plus a smattering of deuterium, tritium and beryllium) were produced.

After about three minutes, the Universe had cooled sufficiently to halt this process.

Any other elements would be produced in a stars core or a nova/supernova explosion.

Answer 2

Soon after the Big Bang, protons and neutronswere created and formed atomic nuclei. Theprotonis the nucleus of a hydrogen atom.

Deuterium(an isotope of hydrogen) nucleiwere also formed, along with nuclei ofisotopes of helium.

The nucleiand electronsremained uncombineduntil about 380,000years

after the Big Bang. That's when atoms(of hydrogen and helium mainly)formed.

As well as hydrogen and helium a small amount of lithium was also formed.

Answer 3

Hydrogen only.

The big bang only produced hydrogen. After the big bang, it was hot enough for a few minutes for nuclear fusion to occur, this was enough to create the next element(s) = helium and a little bit of deuterium.

Better known as Big Bang nucleosynthesis [See related link]

Answer 4

[edit] Heavy elementsBig Bang nucleosynthesis produced no elements heavier than beryllium, due to a bottleneck due to the absence of a stable nucleus with 8 or 5 nucleons. In stars, the bottleneck is passed by triple collisions of helium-4 nuclei, producing carbon (the triple-alpha process). However, this process is very slow, taking tens of thousands of years to convert a significant amount of helium to carbon in stars, and therefore it made a negligible contribution in the minutes following the Big Bang. [edit] Helium-4Main article: Helium-4

Big Bang nucleosynthesis predicts a primordial abundance of about 25% helium-4 by mass, irrespective of the initial conditions of the universe. As long as the universe was hot enough for protons and neutrons to transform into each other easily, their ratio, determined solely by their relative masses, was about 1 neutron to 7 protons (allowing for some decay of neutrons into protons). Once it was cool enough, the neutrons quickly bound with an equal number of protons to form helium-4. Helium-4 is very stable and neither decays nor combines easily to form heavier nuclei. So out of every 16 nucleons (2 neutrons and 14 protons), 4 of these (25%) combined into one helium-4 nucleus. One analogy is to think of helium-4 as ash, and the amount of ash that one forms when one completely burns a piece of wood is insensitive to how one burns it.

The helium-4 abundance is important because there is far more helium-4 in the universe than can be explained by stellar nucleosynthesis. In addition, it provides an important test for the Big Bang theory. If the observed helium abundance is much different from 25%, then this would pose a serious challenge to the theory. This would particularly be the case if the early helium-4 abundance was much smaller than 25% because it is hard to destroy helium-4. For a few years during the mid-1990s, observations suggested that this might be the case, causing astrophysicists to talk about a Big Bang nucleosynthetic crisis, but further observations were consistent with the Big Bang theory.[4]

[edit] DeuteriumDeuterium is in some ways the opposite of helium-4 in that while helium-4 is very stable and very difficult to destroy, deuterium is only marginally stable and easy to destroy. Because helium-4 is very stable, there is a strong tendency on the part of two deuterium nuclei to combine to form helium-4. The only reason BBN does not convert all of the deuterium in the universe to helium-4 is that the expansion of the universe cooled the universe and cut this conversion short before it could be completed. One consequence of this is that unlike helium-4, the amount of deuterium is very sensitive to initial conditions. The denser the universe is, the more deuterium gets converted to helium-4 before time runs out, and the less deuterium remains.

There are no known post-Big Bang processes which would produce significant amounts of deuterium. Hence observations about deuterium abundance suggest that the universe is not infinitely old, which is in accordance with the Big Bang theory.

During the 1970s, there were major efforts to find processes that could produce deuterium, which turned out to be a way of producing isotopes other than deuterium. The problem was that while the concentration of deuterium in the universe is consistent with the Big Bang model as a whole, it is too high to be consistent with a model that presumes that most of the universe consists of protons and neutrons. If one assumes that all of the universe consists of protons and neutrons, the density of the universe is such that much of the currently observed deuterium would have been burned into helium-4.

This inconsistency between observations of deuterium and observations of the expansion rate of the universe led to a large effort to find processes that could produce deuterium. After a decade of effort, the consensus was that these processes are unlikely, and the standard explanation now used for the abundance of deuterium is that the universe does not consist mostly of baryons, and that non-baryonic matter (also known as dark matter) makes up most of the matter mass of the universe. This explanation is also consistent with calculations that show that a universe made mostly of protons and neutrons would be far more clumpy than is observed.

It is very hard to come up with another process that would produce deuterium via nuclear fusion. What this process would require is that the temperature be hot enough to produce deuterium, but not hot enough to produce helium-4, and that this process immediately cools down to non-nuclear temperatures after no more than a few minutes. Also, it is necessary for the deuterium to be swept away before it reoccurs.

Producing deuterium by fission is also difficult. The problem here again is that deuterium is very subject to nuclear processes, and that collisions between atomic nuclei are likely to result either in the absorption of the nuclei, or in the release of free neutrons or alpha particles. During the 1970s, attempts were made to use cosmic ray spallation to produce deuterium. These attempts failed to produce deuterium, but did unexpectedly produce other light elements.

I dont know how much this can help you, but if you keep reading the following article you should find more.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Bang_nucleosynthesis

Hope i helped

Answer 5

Hydrogen and helium.

The ratios of hydrogen to helium to deuterium in our Universe are almost perfectly as predicted by the Big Bang. Every other hypothesis has to say, "I don't why those are the ratios in our Universe -- they just are."

Answer 6

There were no elements formed in the big bang, and there was nothing to form

them with for considerable time after the event. Some time passed before things

cooled enough for matter to emerge out of the pure energy, and it did so in the

form of the first elementary particles. More time had to pass before atoms formed,

and they were the simplest possible atoms ... one electron coupled to one proton,

forming one hydrogen atom. Right there, you have an intuitive explanation for the

vast preponderance of hydrogen in the universe, which is all you need, along with

gravity, to make stars. From there, the stars are the pressure cookers where all the

other elements are made.

Answer 7

Hydrogen and helium. The ratio of their abundance in our Universe matches perfectly what we would expect if the Big Bang happened as we think it does. Alternative hypotheses can only say, "We don't know WHY the ratio is what it is -- it just IS that way."

Answer 8

No elements were present at the instant of the big bang. Some time passed

before things cooled enough for matter to emerge out of the pure energy, and

it did so in the form of the first elementary particles. More time had to pass before

atoms formed, and they were the simplest possible atoms ... one electron coupled

to one proton, forming one hydrogen atom. Right there, you have an intuitive

explanation for the vast preponderance of hydrogen in the universe, which is

all you need, along with gravity, to make stars. From there, the stars are the

pressure cookers where all the rest of the elements are made.

Answer 9

All of the natural elements existed before the Big Bang theory. Those that formed

after the theory were created, in evanescent quantities of a few atoms each, in

large particle accelerators.

Answer 10

All elements except hydrogen are created by nucleosynthesis.