Washington: The composition of the universe — the elements that are the building blocks for matter — is ever-changing and evolving, thanks to the lives and deaths of stars, according to a study. The study describes how these elements form as stars grow and explode, and fade and merge.
“The universe went through some very interesting changes, where all of a sudden the periodic table — the total number of elements in the universe — changed a lot,” said Jennifer Johnson, a professor at the Ohio State University in the US. “For 100 million years after the Big Bang, there was nothing but hydrogen, helium and lithium. And then we started to get carbon and oxygen and really important things. And now, we are kind of in the glory days of populating the periodic table,” said Johnson.
It is chemistry’s way of organising elements, helping scientists from elementary school to the world’s best laboratories understand how materials around the universe come together. However, as scientists have long known, the periodic table is just made of stardust: Most elements on the periodic table, from the lightest hydrogen to heavier elements like lawrencium, started in stars.
The table has grown as new elements have been discovered — or in cases of synthetic elements, have been created in laboratories around the world — but the basics of Mendeleev’s understanding of atomic weight and the building blocks of the universe have held true. Nucleosynthesis — the process of creating a new element — began with the Big Bang, about 13.7 billion years ago.
When the small star dies, it leaves behind a white dwarf star. White dwarfs synthesise other elements when they merge and explode, they said. An exploding white dwarf might send calcium or iron into the abyss surrounding it. Merging neutron stars might create rhodium or xenon. Since like humans, stars live and die on different time scales — and different elements are produced as a star goes through its life and death — the composition of elements in the universe also changes over time.
