By- Srushti sharma
As everyone knows, there are a huge variety of elements in the cosmos, from heavy metals like lead to light gases like helium. But where did all of the elements come from?
When our universe was only a few seconds to a few minutes old, right after the Big Bang, the elements' journey began.
The universe was then compressed into a volume that was millions of times smaller than it is now.
The average temperature of all the stuff in the cosmos was well over a billion degrees, more than hot enough for nuclear reactions to occur because of the extraordinarily high densities.
Protons and neutrons could not even exist as stable entities due to the extreme heat. Rather, the universe consisted solely of quarks and gluons, which are more fundamental particles, churning in an unprocessed plasma state.
However, that would not last very long in the cosmos. It must have been cooling because it was expanding. Without disintegrating right away, the quarks might eventually link together to create the first protons and neutrons.
Because protons are tinier than neutrons, they have an advantage in this first stage of particle formation. The universe was much too cold to produce new protons and neutrons after a few minutes had passed.
With the exception of a few exceptional high-energy interactions in the future, the cosmos was only ever going to produce those initial heavy particles.
There were about six protons for every neutron when the heavier particles ultimately froze out.
Helium-4, which is made up of two protons and two neutrons, has the highest binding energy of all the light elements, making it the simplest to form and the hardest to break apart. Therefore, nearly all of that helium was used to create helium-4.