4. BIG BANG MODELS
• Is the cosmological models based on general relativity – tell
us that the early universe was extremely hot and dense.
• At the earliest stages that can be modeled using current
physical theories, the universe was filled with radiation and
elementary particles – a hot plasma in which energy was
distributed evenly.
5. Big Bang Nucleosynthesis
• As the universe cools, the matter content changes – new
particles are formed out of the preexisting ones, such as
protons and neutrons forming out of quarks.
• From about one second to a few minutes cosmic time, when
the temperature has fallen below 10 billion Kelvin, the
conditions are just right for protons and neutrons to combine
and form certain species of atomic nuclei.
6. Life Cycle of a Star
• Nucleosynthesis is the process by which atoms of lighter chemical
elements fuse together, creating atoms of heavier elements.
• Atoms are comprised of three elementary particles - protons and neutrons
bound into a dense nucleus and electrons surrounding that nucleus.
• In the fusion process, light nuclei collide, recombine their protons and
neutrons into heavier nuclei, and release energy. This process requires
tremendous amounts of heat and energy; as such this fusion can only
happen in extreme environments.
8. Life Cycle of a Star
• Stars populate the universe with elements through
their “lifecycle”—an ongoing process of
formation, burning fuel, and dispersal of
material when all the fuel is used up.
9. Life Cycle of a Star
• All stars form in nebulae, which are huge clouds of gas
and dust.
• Though they shine for many thousands, and even
millions of years, stars do not last forever.
• The changes that occur in a star over time and the final
stage of its life depend on a star's size.
10. Life Cycle of a Star
• Main sequence: Nuclear reactions at the centre (or core) of
a star provides energy which makes it shine brightly.
• The exact lifetime of a star depends very much on its size.
Very massive stars use up their fuel quickly. This means they
may only last a few hundred thousand years. Smaller stars use
up fuel more slowly so will shine for several billion years.
11. Life Cycle of a Star
• Eventually, the hydrogen which powers the
nuclear reactions inside a star begins to run out.
The star then enters the final phases of its lifetime.
All stars will expand, cool and change color to
become a red giant.
12. Life Cycle of a Star
• A massive star experiences a much more energetic and violent end.
It explodes as a supernova. This scatters materials from inside the
star across space to recombine as future stars, planets, and asteroids,
or even eventually life like us
• This material can collect in nebulae and form the next generation of
stars. After the dust clears, a very dense neutron star is left behind.
These spin rapidly and can give off streams of radiation, known as
pulsars.
13. Life Cycle of a Star
• If the remnant is more than three times as massive as
the Sun, gravity overwhelms the neutrons and the star
collapses completely into a black hole—so-called
because the matter within is so compressed and the pull
of gravity is so intense that even light is drawn in and
not reflected, so that area is “black” or unobservable.
15. Formation of Heavier Elements
• A supernova generates such an unbelievable burst of energy.
In this brief moment, dozens of elements heavier than iron
can also be synthesized such as Nickel, Copper, Zinc,
Silver, and Gold.
• Any element with an atomic number greater than twenty-
six is made either in a supernova or a rare event like a
collision of a two-neutron star or a neutron star with a black
hole.
16. Proton-proton chain reaction
• A proton–proton chain reaction is one of the ways
by which stars fuse hydrogen into helium. It is the
reaction that dominates in stars the size of the Sun
or average-sized stars, where they get their energy
and convert Hydrogen into Helium
17. Proton-proton chain reaction
• Stars with a mass of about 1.5 solar masses or
more produce most of their energy by a different
form of hydrogen fusion, the CNO cycle.
• CNO stands for Carbon, Nitrogen, and Oxygen
as nuclei of these elements are involved in the
process.
18.
19. TRIPLE ALPHA PROCESS
• The triple alpha process is a nuclear fusion process where three helium
nuclei are combined to form a carbon-12 nucleus (C-12). The C-12 nucleus
can sometimes capture an additional He-4 nucleus to produce an oxygen-16
nucleus (O-16).
20. Proton-proton chain and CNO cycle
• Proton-proton chain and CNO cycle cause He-4
nuclei to accumulate in the core of main-sequence
stars.
• When a main-sequence star evolves into its next
stage (e.g., red giant), the core temperature of the
star becomes sufficient for the triple-alpha process
to take place.
21. ALPHA LADDER PROCESS
• Stars accumulate more mass and continue to grow
into red super giants.
• Alpha particle fusion happens at its core and
creates heavier elements until Iron (Fe). This is
called the Alpha ladder process.
22. How do elements heavier than Iron form?
• In the growing ball of gas, strontium was found to
absorb light at wavelengths between 350 and 850
nanometers, according to computer simulations. They
noticed dips in the spectra at those wavelengths when
they reexamined the X-shooter spectra. The end
outcome was Strontium with a mass of five Earth
masses.
23. SLOW PROCESS/S-PROCESS
• In the creation of heavier elements, neutron
capture can occur slowly or quickly.
• When radioactive decay occurs more quickly than
neutron capture, the S-process, also known as the
slow process, happens, which raises the proton by
one.
25. RAPID NEUTRON CAPTURE/R-
PROCESS
• It refers to a higher rate of neutron capture before
radioactive decay, which leads to more neutrons
combining at the nucleus.
• Elements heavier than Iron originate during
supernova nucleosynthesis, which takes place in
this process.
27. SUMMARY
• Neutrons, protons, and electrons are the three
minuscule components that make up an element.
• The first elements to exist are Hydrogen and
Helium. It was an elementary particle at the
beginning of the Big Bang.
• During the period of the proton-proton chain
reaction, during which protons fused into helium,
the universe expanded and cooled.
28. SUMMARY
• The Universe expands right through this potential,
and the density and temperature quickly fall too
low to support the synthesis of any more elements.
Red giant cores get beyond this through the Triple-
Alpha process.
30. Dmitri
Mendeleev
• A Russian chemist,
who devised the
Periodic Table of
Elements — a
comprehensive system
for classifying
chemical elements.
31. Henry Moseley
• An English physicist, (1913) who used X-
rays to measure the wavelengths of
elements and correlated these
measurements to their atomic numbers.
• He then rearranged the elements in the
periodic table on the basis of atomic
numbers. This helped explain disparities in
earlier versions that had used atomic
masses.
32. Discovery of Nuclear Transmutation
• In 1919, Ernest Rutherford successfully carried out a nuclear transmutation
reaction — a reaction involving the transformation of one element or
isotope into another element.
• The first nuclide to be prepared by artificial means was an isotope of oxygen,
17O. It was made by Ernest Rutherford in 1919 by bombarding Nitrogen
atoms with alpha particles.
34. • James Chadwick discovered the neutron in 1932, as a previously
unknown neutral particle produced along with Carbon-12 by the
nuclear reaction between Beryllium-9 and Helium-4.
• The first element to be prepared that does not occur naturally on
the earth, Technetium, was created by bombardment of
Molybdenum by deuterons (heavy Hydrogen, H12), by Emilio
Segre and Carlo Perrier in 1937
35. The Discovery of the Missing
Elements
• In 1937, American physicist Ernest Lawrence
synthesized element with atomic number 43 using a
linear particle accelerator. He bombarded
molybdenum (Z=42) with fast-moving neutrons. The
newly synthesized element was named Technetium
(Tc) after the Greek word "technêtos" meaning
“artificial.” Tc was the first man-made element.
36. The Discovery of the Missing
Elements
• In 1940, Dale Corson, K. Mackenzie, and Emilio Segre discovered
element with atomic number 85. They bombarded atoms of
Bismuth (Z=83) with fastmoving alpha particles in a cyclotron. A
cyclotron is a particle accelerator that uses alternating electric field
to accelerate particles that move in a spiral path in the presence of
a magnetic field. Element-85 was named Astatine from the Greek
word “astatos” meaning unstable.
37. The Transuranic Elements
• Transuranic elements are chemical elements with
atomic numbers greater than 92, which means they
have more protons in their nuclei than uranium (atomic
number 92). These elements are all synthetic and do not
occur naturally in significant quantities on Earth.
•
38. The Superheavy Elements
Superheavy elements are those with atomic numbers
significantly higher than those found in the periodic table of
naturally occurring elements. They are highly unstable and
are typically synthesized in laboratories through nuclear
reactions. Here is a list of some superheavy elements along
with their atomic numbers:
39. The Superheavy Elements
Nihonium (Nh) - Atomic Number 113
Flerovium (Fl) - Atomic Number 114
Moscovium (Mc) - Atomic Number 115
Livermorium (Lv) - Atomic Number 116
Tennessine (Ts) - Atomic Number 117
Oganesson (Og) - Atomic Number 118
40. PERFORMANCE TASK
• Create an output that discusses the origin of one of the man-made
elements. In your output, you must:
• discuss the element’s basic characteristics
• give a brief timeline leading up to the element’s discovery
• You may present your research in the form of a poster, PowerPoint,
a report or essay, video, or infographic.
Editor's Notes
During the subsequent expansion, this plasma has progressively cooled down. By examining how the cooling affects the matter content of the universe, one can derive one of the most impressive testable predictions of the Big Bang models
Big Bang Nucleosynthesis was incapable of producing heavier atomic nuclei such as those necessary to build human bodies or a planet like the Earth. Instead, those nuclei were formed in the interior of stars. By the same token, the element abundances we see around us are not the “primordial abundances” right after Big Bang Nucleosynthesis, but have been altered by later stellar processing.
This fusion of nuclei in stars is the most concrete theory today for the origin of heavy elements. Our current understanding is that the early universe contained only very light elements, chiefly the single-proton Hydrogen atom. The remaining elements in the periodic table, including those essential for the molecules in our bodies, were then created in stars through nucleosynthesis before the earth was formed.
Different stars take different paths, however, depending on how much matter they contain—their mass. A star’s mass depends on how much hydrogen gas is brought together by gravity during its formation.
We measure the mass of stars by how they compare to the “parent star” of our system, the Sun. Stars are considered high-mass when they are five times or more massive than the Sun.
What happens next depends on how massive the star is. A smaller star, like the Sun, will gradually cool down and stop glowing. During these changes it will go through the planetary nebula phase, and white dwarf phase. After many thousands of millions of years it will stop glowing and become a black dwarf.
Because stars cannot synthesize these heavy elements the way they can synthesize all the other elements up to iron during the course of their long lifespan, they are far rarer than elements like carbon and oxygen. Only when a high-mass star dies or when two unusual objects collide can nature produce these uncommon elements
As its name implies, this process is cyclical. It requires a proton to fuse with a C-12 nuclei to start the cycle. The resultant N-13 nucleus is unstable and undergoes beta-positive decay to C-13. This then fuses with another proton to form N-14 which in turn fuses with a proton to give O-15. Being unstable this undergoes beta-positive decay to form N-15. When this fuses with a proton, the resultant nucleus immediately splits to form a He-4 nucleus and a C-12 nucleus. This carbon nucleus is then able to initiate another cycle. Carbon-12 thus acts like a nuclear catalyst, it is essential for the process to proceed but ultimately is not used up by it.
The triple alpha process occurs in post-main sequence stars. This is because the triple-alpha process can only occur when the star’s core temperature is greater than 100 MK. The high core temperature gives nuclei sufficient kinetic energy to overcome their much greater electrostatic repulsion.
This way, the star makes use of the large quantity of He-4 nuclei to synthesize heavier elements and produce more energy.
Nuclear fusion can no longer create elements heavier than iron as a star's core loses energy. It needs to go through multiple processes in order for new, heavier elements to develop.
The research demonstrates that neutron stars are truly composed of neutrons and that at least some of the heavier elements are created when neutron stars merge.
In the creation of heavier elements, neutron capture can occur slowly or quickly.
When radioactive decay occurs more quickly than neutron capture, the S-process, also known as the slow process, happens, which raises the proton by one.
atoms, which are extremely small building pieces, are the basis of all the stuff in the universe
Mendeleev’s chart allotted spaces for elements that were yet to be discovered. For some of these missing pieces, he predicted what their atomic masses and other chemical properties would be. When scientists later discovered the elements Mendeleev expected, the world got a glimpse of the brilliance behind the periodic table.
However, both alpha particles and atomic nuclei are positively charged, so they tend to repel each other. Therefore, instead of using fast-moving alpha particles in synthesizing new elements, atomic nuclei are often bombarded with neutrons (neutral particles) in particle accelerators, also known as cyclotrons.
The two other elements with atomic numbers 61 and 87 were discovered through studies in radioactivity. Element-61 (Promethium) was discovered as a decay product of the fission of Uranium while element-87 (Francium) was discovered as a breakdown product of Uranium.
These elements are often referred to as superheavy because they have significantly more protons in their atomic nuclei than any naturally occurring elements. They are highly unstable and exist for very short periods of time before undergoing radioactive decay into lighter elements. The synthesis of superheavy elements is a challenging and complex process carried out in specialized laboratories using particle accelerators and target materials.