Why is there something rather than nothing?
<img height=”800” src=”https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/2008/Nucleosynthesis2_WikipediaCmglee_2000.jpg";
To qoute Satai Delenn the Minbari ambassador to Babylon 5 “We are all star stuff.”
I know the dark grey elements are only found as radioactive isotopes. Do the astronomers have a theory about where they are produced, besides a laboratory?
“The hydrogen in your body was made in the big bang.”
Not really. Most Hydrogen on Earth exists as a single proton, with no neutrons and two attracted electrons. It spontaneously forms Hydrogen gas, so two protons can share those two electrons and remain electrically neutral. Occasionally, a Hydrogen atom WILL include a neutron that will remain bounded by the strong force within’that atom.
Stars consist mostly of bare photons and neutrons. It might be reasonable to call a photon an atom of Hydrogen, but whereas stars are made mostly of photons, they are not elemental Hydrogen. That is, they are not formed by the strong force into distinct units. It doesn’t really make sense to call photons “Hydrogen,” unless you’re going to say “Oxygen is made out of eight Hydrogens and 10 neutrons.” Absurd. So let’s use “Hydrogen” to refer to matter in an elemental state (liquid, gas, solid) and refer to protons in a plasma. Using that definition of Hydrogen, it is produced constantly in stars, and not from the Big Bang.
I’m really hoping that Betelgeuse goes supernova during my lifetime so I get to see the process and its aftermath. Or to be more precise, I hope that it has already happened in the last several hundred years - however many light years distance Betelgeuse is from Earth.
“We are stardust
We are golden
And we’ve got to get ourselves
Back to the garden...” ~ Joni Mitchell
They babble on, and I’m not buying it. Please explain to me how there were no elements, just a large mass of assorted protons, neutrons, electrons and all the other little spinning things, and then some force grabbed them and sorted them out neatly into protons + neutrons, with them little electrons spinning in neat orbits around the nucleus, and voila created the elements.
Interesting...Krypton comes from exploding stars.
Very cool. Thanks for posting.
*another APOD ping*
Perhaps God said it best in Genesis 2:7 after making a Man out of the Elements He had created: “And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.”
Since the Laws of Thermodynamics are pretty clear that something cannot be created from nothing, and we all agree that something exists which we identify on the Periodic Table as Elements; it is reasonable to conclude that something did come from something.
If true; it is reasonable to project that matter,gases,radiation, even the “Dust of the ground” had a cause or a “Causer”. Since Matter has been taught in Physics to have always existed; and “Bangs” even big ones do not happen in a vacuum of space without a cause(or Causer), it takes a great leap of Faith to believe that blind and random universal forces came together in the”Star Stuff” of the Periodic Table to culminate in a human being.
Perhaps, it take less Faith to believe that a Creator with a purpose took this same “Dust of the ground” from the “Bang” and the “Star Stuff” He had created; then made from it a living human being.
Just saying, do the math of probabilities that all this is random. You will quickly run out of zeros.
You are waaaay down the list there bud. Try starting with matter, space and time. Where did THEY come from?
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