Why Carbon Did Not Form In The Big Bang?

Where did all the chemical elements in the periodic table come from? Physicists theorized that elements can be created inside dying stars and astronomers confirmed this by observation.

Essential elements like carbon, nitrogen, oxygen and iron are created towards the end of a star’s life cycle. Much heavier and precious elements like Gold are formed in supernova explosions.

Shortly after the big bang, the explosion that birthed the universe, there was 92% hydrogen and 8% helium atoms. Simple elements came into existence quick, obvious, but what about the rest of them?

Why did nature have to wait for early stars' death in hundreds of millions of years time to produce carbon, oxygen, etc.?

Two reasons: One, by the time simple atoms formed, the universe had already cooled enough. Second, there was hardly any disposable helium.

We know, hydrogen has 1 nucleon, a proton, and helium has 2 protons and 2 neutrons, so 4 nucleons. The reactions to yield heavier elements would be:

H + He or He + He

Giving out nuclei with 5 and 8 nucleons respectively, both highly unstable.

For example: The resulting beryllium-8 has half life of only 8.19×10−17 seconds. Stable beryllium has 5 neutrons and 4 protons.

Thus, beryllium-8 would immediately decay into two stable helium nuclei, if ever it came into being.

Besides, hydrogen and helium are themselves incredibly stable. It turns out that nature preferred stability over creation of heavy elements.

Soon, gigantic lumps of hydrogen began forming due to sophisticated engineering by gravity. The lumps were spherical, because again… nature likes stability.

The first stars made light in extreme conditions upon converting hydrogen to helium, because of Einstein's energy mass equivalence.

Towards the end, most hydrogen in the star is converted to helium. There is abundance of helium nuclei to combine with beryllium-8 in just the right time to become carbon-12.

Ultimately, it boils down to the amount of disposable helium, even if the pressure and temperature conditions are met. The collapsing star makes more elements like nitrogen, oxygen, iron and nickel as it dies.

In the big bang, helium was unavailable for extensive use. Whereas, in the star, formation of carbon is possible in the triple alpha process. And since life on earth is carbon based, we are children of the stars.

First Images From NASA's Webb Telescope Revealed

First image (credit: NASA, ESA, CSA) by the Webb Telescope is of galaxy cluster SMACS 0723 as it appeared 4.6 billion years ago, the time when our planet Earth just began to form. Surrounding the cluster are tiny unseen objects of the universe as they were 13 billion years ago, shortly after the Big bang.

SMACS 0723, a massive object, is bending the light rays coming from the distant galaxies behind it. The Webb telescope has brought those galaxies into sharp focus. This phenomenon is called gravitational lensing and is based on Einstein's theory of relativity.

The image was taken by Webb's near-infrared camera and took about 12.5 hours to be assembled from a collection of images taken at various wavelengths. When the Hubble Space Telescope took a similar deep field image it took several weeks!

The first deep field was unveiled by the president of the United States Joe Biden during a White House event. “It’s hard to even fathom,” he commented.. “It’s astounding. It’s an historic moment for science and technology, for America and all of humanity.”

Thousands of galaxies that have come into Webb's infrared view for the first time would fit in a single grain of sand held at arm's length by someone on the ground. These images will help astronomers to calculate the compositions of the earliest galaxies.

The telescope, named after the longest serving NASA administrator, took over 30 years for completion and could revolutionize our understanding of the universe. Its infrared capabilities will allow humans to see back in time to the first galaxies and study their evolution.

Webb is the official successor of the Hubble space telescope. Its operations are led by NASA with its partners: ESA (European Space Agency) and CSA (Canadian Space Agency). The camera that took this image was built by the University of Arizona and Lockheed Martin’s Advanced Technology Center.

Why James Webb Telescope Is Better Than Hubble

The James Webb space telescope (JWST) is named after the longest serving NASA administrator and is the official successor to the Hubble space telescope. JWST is the costliest astronomy project having spent nearly three decades in the making.

The largest and the most powerful telescope in the world is scheduled to be launched in December 2021 after many delays since completion. The JWST will be able to look back in time closer to the Big Bang than ever before.

Comparison

JWST was built by NASA in collaboration with European Space Agency and Canadian Space Agency. It will explore the universe in the infrared region, something that Hubble space telescope is incapable of doing. The mirror size is 6.5 meters - three times the size on the Hubble telescope but it weighs half of Hubble.

Protection

To make observations in the infrared part of the electromagnetic spectrum, JWST must be kept under 50K or −223°C which is extremely cold. It uses a cryocooler and a large five-layer sunshield to block light and heat from the Sun, Earth and Moon to maintain a stable temperature.

Mission

The objectives of JWST include detecting clues to the origins of the universe, like observing infant galaxies and their evolution. As well as locating earth like planets outside the solar system and study the origins of life.

Hubble space telescope is capable of observing events that happened in space some 500 million years after the Big Bang, whereas Webb telescope can go back even further to around 100 million years after that event.

Instruments

JWST has a near infrared camera for observation of faint extrasolar planets very close to the bright stars. It also has a near infrared spectrograph capable of measuring spectrum of faint stars and galaxies. A fine guidance sensor helps the telescope stay pointed at whatever it is commanded to look at.

Challenges

It was scheduled to launch before but accidental tears in the delicate sunshield in 2018 delayed the project. Controversy also erupted over naming of the telescope as activists alleged that James Webb had discriminated against LGBTQ scientists during his term.

The mirror in JWST will be folded before launch. It is made up of 18 hexagonal segments - shaped so to join without gaps in between them. The mirror will unfold after the launch and it will take at least two weeks before the telescope becomes operational in orbit.

How it works

When picture of a galaxy is taken we see it the way it was millions of years ago because light takes time to travel. It is like finding a picture of a child dated from 1900 but if that child was still alive, they would be among the oldest people on the planet.

As the light travels, it becomes red-shifted due to expansion of the universe. So, objects at extreme distances are easier to see in the infrared. We can see these objects the way they were millions of years ago, that is, when that galaxy was fairly young.

JWST's infrared capabilities will allow humans to see back in time to the first galaxies for the first time. Infrared astronomy will also help us to learn how stars and galaxies have evolved over time. By overcoming all the challenges, JWST is set to launch in December 2021.

Who discovered that we are made from star stuff?

Astronomer Carl Sagan popularized the phrase "We are made of star stuff" when he said: Nitrogen in our DNA, calcium in our teeth, iron in our blood and carbon in our food; were made in the interiors of collapsing stars.

However, most people wouldn't know the name of that scientist who actually found it out. It was German American physicist Hans Bethe (1906-2005) who wrote it in a paper titled "Energy Production in Stars" as early as in 1939.

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In 1930s, at the time when European scientists were debating quantum mechanics, Bethe migrated to United States and contemplated the stars. He thus became the first person to figure out that conversion of hydrogen into helium was the primary source of energy in a star.

The process is called nuclear fusion in which many nuclei combine together to make a larger one. It so happens that the resultant nucleus is smaller in mass than the sum of the ones that made it. So, by virtue of Einstein's equation E=mc², the mass is converted to energy.

When a star would eventually run out of hydrogen (its primary fuel) it would start converting helium into carbon, nitrogen, oxygen and so on, in order to keep itself hot.

However, those reactions themselves will halt at some point and the star would no longer be able to support itself against its own gravity and it will die in an explosion.

Therefore, it was proposed that most of the material that we're made from, came out of the dead stars which spewed out those chemical elements into the universe for further use. Hence, we are made of star stuff.

Bethe's groundbreaking paper not only helped in understanding the inner workings of the stars but also solved the age-old questions like: 'How do stars shine?' 'Where did the chemical elements come from?'

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He won the 1967 Nobel Prize in physics for this theory of stellar nucleosynthesis. Bethe would continue to do research on supernovae, neutron stars, black holes and other problems of astrophysics well into his late nineties.

Carl Sagan and Hans Bethe share the stage at Cornell

Now, Carl Sagan, who was earlier at Harvard University, joined Cornell in 1976 and became immediate colleagues with Hans Bethe who had been at Cornell since coming to America in 1935. While Bethe was a professor of physics, Sagan was a professor of Astronomy.

It was unfortunate that the general public still did not know about stellar nucleosynthesis despite Bethe discovering it some 40 years ago and winning the highest prize for it a decade ago. Carl Sagan changed this.

Their common interests in science and politics brought them even closer. Bethe was also a fan of Sagan's 1980 show Cosmos: A personal voyage. In one of the episodes, when Sagan said "We are made of star stuff", he immortalized Bethe's work in television history.