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We think of outer space as a vacuum, containing nothing. This is not entirely true. There is matter - mostly gasses - throughout space. It's very thin - but it is, barely, detectable.

We measure hard vacuum in terms of atoms per cubic meter.

Most of the gas floating around in space is hydrogen; but then, most of the material in the universe is hydrogen. Scientists believe that almost all of the matter that came out of the Big Bang was hydrogen, with just a little helium (and tiny traces of lithium) in the mix. Early stars fused the hydrogen into helium, and then into carbon, silicon, oxygen, iron and all of the other "heavy" elements. When those early stars exploded in supernovas, those explosions blew vast quantities of those other elements back into space.

When the later stellar nebulae formed, the hydrogen came to the center to form the star, but the heavier elements sometimes coalesced to form planets. We're not entirely certain of the precise details of how this process works yet, but the broad outlines are clear enough.

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16y ago

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