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What's the third most common element?

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Re: What's the third most common element?

#61
post #46

What caught my eye was the oscillation in the abundancy graph, there is a tendency for even atomic number elements to be more abundant than odd atomic number elements. Looking at the original Wikipedia article leads to the Oddo-Harkins rule http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oddo%E2%80%93Harkins_rule . There is more discussion on the stability of even vs odd atomic number elements here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Even_an…

when you roll 2 dice, you get a lot more evens than odds. i imagine the same principle holds. if an odd (Hydrogen) forms with another odd, you get even. Hydrogen+helium=odd, but helium + helium = even. as the evens outnumber the odds, even more evens are forming with evens.

This is a really interesting thought. Assuming you can only add two atoms at random, there are four options:

odd + odd = even (odd reduced by 2, evens increased by 1)

odd + even = odd (evens reduced by 1)

even + odd = odd (evens reduced by 1)

even + even = even (evens reduced by 1!)

When the evens outnumber the odds, odd+odd will be rare, so the percentage of evens will tend to decrease until it reaches 50%.

No matter many of each type you start with, the equilibrium position is 50-50% odd and even.

However: there may be an exception to this. If all the odds are in one place, then odd-odd may be more likely than random. If you have all evens in one place, you can't get back to having odds again - you can't (ever) increase the number of odds that already exist to balance things out, you can only decrease the evens. 0-100% odd and even could also be an equilibrium position.

Re: What's the third most common element?

#62
post #60
post #57

As for lithium (the third-most abundant element after the Big Bang, at 0.00000001% of nuclei), it so happens I was just reading the James S. A. Corey novel Cibola Burn where it plays a role: "People used to think gold was worth fightin' over, and that shit gets made by every supernova, which means pretty much every planet around a G2 star will have some. Stars burn through lithium as fast as they make it. All the ava…

Naw, or at least according to what I've been reading lately we get lithium and a number of other light elements from cosmic ray spallation: ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_ray_spallation so it's happening all the time.

Reminded me how crazy it is that we're in a time where we've legitimized the fabled goal of alchemic transmutation - we can turn mercury to gold. Turns out the philosopher's stone was a particle accelerator.

Re: What's the third most common element?

#63
post #19
post #3

What's the third most common element (in the universe)? tl;dr: Oxygen But it's worth reading the article to learn why.

Note that the very interesting graph near the end of the article actually displays element abundance in the solar system, not in the universe. (Found that out when looking it up in Wikipedia.) The article misrepresents this!

yada yada yada, cosmological principle

Re: What's the third most common element?

#64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most atoms- and certainly most hydrogen- are in stars, no? Not exactly places where water "breaking down at high temperatures" (really, never forming) can be ignored.

Yes, I guess not even H2 is much stable in stars. I would expect that in planet formation situations

It looks like most stars are too hot for molecular hydrogen, but some stars have a bit -- our own sun has some molecular hydrogen in sunspots:

http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2013/mar/13/cold-hy...

Re: What's the third most common element?

#65
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Naw, or at least according to what I've been reading lately we get lithium and a number of other light elements from cosmic ray spallation: ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_ray_spallation so it's happening all the time.

Reminded me how crazy it is that we're in a time where we've legitimized the fabled goal of alchemic transmutation - we can turn mercury to gold. Turns out the philosopher's stone was a particle accelerator.

Don't forget about the incomplete specification problem:

You wanted non-radioactive gold for your jewlery and dental fillings? Oops, sorry about that....

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isotopes_of_gold)

Re: What's the third most common element?

#68
post #17

Surprise?

Well, yeah. I thought it was carbon, and I thought it was way ahead of the others. But instead there are actually a bunch of elements vying pretty closely for third position: oxygen, carbon, neon, nitrogen, magnesium, silicium, iron, sulphur. (Although one should keep in mind that the graph is logarithmic.) Note that the graph actually shows the estimated abundance of elements in the solar system (found that on Wikip…

I thought he was making a Terry Pratchett reference.

> The world is made up of four elements: Earth, Air, Fire and Water. This is a fact well known even to Corporal Nobbs. It's also wrong. There's a fifth element, and generally it's called Surprise.

Re: What's the third most common element?

#69
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No we can't. If it's not molecules, it's not water, and there's nothing here to indicate whether the hydrogen and oxygen are found bound together.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water#In_the_universe While water will break down at high temperatures I would find it surprising that 1st and 3rd most common elements in the whole universe, that readily combine to form water would not result in substantial amounts of water. It's probably like saying we shouldn't find H2 because "nothing says they are found bound together"

Actually the abundance of water was detected in some young sun-like stars:

http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2011-06/herschel-sp...

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