What were the heavier elements in the universe formed by?

Answer 1

They were formed in supernovae.

Answer 2

Nucleosynthesis is the name given for the manufacture of new elements from existing ones, providing there is sufficient energy available and for sufficient time. These conditions usually require a supernova, where conditions exist to make elements heavier than iron. Our Sun with its fusion process can only make elements up to about the mass of iron.

[Lithium is produced and consumed at about equal rates in an ordinary fusion star, such as our sun, and maybe most of the Lithium was produced in the Big Bang, which can be considered for these purposes as a real big supernova.]

Answer 3

All elements heavier than hydrogen have been formed by the process of nuclear fusion inside of stars. For elements heavier than iron, in which fusion consumes energy instead of releasing it, the atoms are only formed during the explosion of a supernova.

Answer 4

(They are) Elements up to Iron are produced in stars... the reason for this is that up to Iron fusion of atomic nuclei produces energy, fusion of heavier elements consumes energy.

But hey, if Iron is the highest element that can be produced in stars where does all the uranium, gold, silver, platinum, etc. come from?

Supernovae... we are star dust.

Edit: That doesn't answer the question though. Heavier elements than oxygen

are produced only in stars with about 10 times the mass of the Sun. The reason is that the Sun can never reach the temperatures needed to make anything past oxygen.

Answer 5

Hydrogen and some helium existed from right after the Big Bang, but most of the so-called "metals" (the heavier elements) were created by fusion, in stars. Some of that went back into space, especially in supernova explosions, where it eventually became part of younger solar systems, like ours.

Answer 6

It is stellar nucleosynthesis that forms elements inside stars. Most stars are giant nuclear fusion machines. They make heavy elements by fusing ligher elements together. This creates all elements up through iron. Elements heavier than iron cannot form in stellar nucleosynthesis. That's because more energy is required to fuse heavier elements together to create the really heavy elements than is liberated in that kind of fusion. The only way these heavier elements can form is when a star dies in a super nova. It is this massive "last gasp" that allows the crushing pressures (and high temperatues) needed to make the trans-iron elements. So all elements heavier than iron were made in super novae.

Answer 7

It depends on the element.

Elements up to iron are generally produced by adding successive alpha particles: two alphas make beryllium (though this is an unstable isotope), another one makes carbon, adding a fourth to that makes oxygen, and so forth.

This only accounts for elements with even atomic numbers. Elements with odd atomic numbers are produced by the breakup of heavier elements (and are rarer than even-numbered elements). Beryllium is a special case: it's got an even atomic number, but is very rare (there is more platinum in the solar system as a whole than there is beryllium, for example) because 8Be, the one that can be made from two alpha particles, is radioactive and the stable isotope, 7Be, has to be made from the decay of heavier atoms.

Up to iron energy is released by this process; past iron, this is not true, and elements heavier than iron are produced in supernovae where there's lots of energy available.

If you're interested in even more details, you could do a Google search for "nucleosynthesis".

Answer 8

They sure are. ALL heavier elements are produced in stars.

Comment: Yes, if you include Supernovae, which I'm sure you do. But I think

it's the question that's wrong. Elements beyond oxygen aren't produced in stars like the Sun. That question, about the Sun, comes up quite a lot.

Answer 9

Heavier elements than iron and nickel, such as lead, are only produced in the explosions of supernovas, as they both blow themselves apart and crush their cores into neutron stars or black holes. The Sun isn't massive enough to go supernova, so it will never produce any heavy elements. In fact it cannot reach the temperatures needed to go beyond oxygen.

Elements after oxygen, up to iron, are only made in stars with at least 8 times the mass of our Sun.

Answer 10

The heavier elements are created when stars go Super Nova. In that final moment when the gravity of a collapsing Star over comes the ability to Fuse iron into the next element, Nuclear Fusion once again takes place in the core and 1 creates the heavier elements gold zinc etc and 2 one of the most dazzling displays the Universe has to offer.