This is a fun one. I am also fond of one that people throw out over a lot of different things: “it’s not natural!” - often typed out using a human made script translated to machine language to be received by a rock that counts numbers and transmitted through chemically treated and vacuum lithographed pathways made for capturing and structuring electrical impulses before being converted to radiation, beamed across the planet or into outer space, and then reversing the process to to to converted back to human language and read by someone else, probably in a man made structure or perhaps moving along at up to 600+ miles per hour who is likely at least partially clothed and probably wearing something with polyester or rayon or such- which one is the rayon bush again..? I haven’t seen many retail workers or lawyers in nature either. What a delightfully daft thought train.
It has to be that high because of stars right? It would be cool to see a graph that shows an estimate of all of the mass of the stars put together compared with black holes, neutron stars/pulsars, and planets
I'm not an expert (that's @guest_'s job) but I think it has to do with how matter organises itself. Basically hydrogen is just one electron orbiting a single proton so it's the simplest way those particles can organise themselves. Helium has two electrons, two protons and two neutrons, making it the second easiest atom to make. Everything else just require more energy to make, usually in the form of a star that creates heavier elements through fusion.
Expertly said! In a nutshell- hydrogen and helium are simple and easy and nature as we know it favors simple and easy.
A little extra depths is this- at high heat atoms tend to shed their electrons. So as theory goes, the “Big Bang” was VERY hot. This meant that after the Big Bang- most of the atomic matter in the universe was helium and hydrogen because they are simple and have few electrons (one for helium…) which is as small as an atom as we know it can basically be.
Over time the helium and hydrogen and some of the other rarer stuff spit out would form other elements and even stars- which stars then produce heavy elements, many of the unstable ones such as some uraniums etc. then decay and along with other elements release… hydrogen and/or helium!
So going off the widely accepted Big Bang theory- it’s less that the stars are the main “culprit” in the reason why most of the universe is hydrogen but more that most of the universe exists because of hydrogen and the entire periodic table is bound to it. Hydrogen and helium (or their common isotopes- not helium 3 or tritium) are extremely stable. We can only theorize that they MAY decay someday and the form of that decay is the somewhat theoretical proton decay- but best simulations indicate proton decay as being such a long process that our species is unlikely to exist to observe it naturally and as far as we know we haven’t witnessed proton decay of hydrogen that was created even at the birth of the universe. So basically the universe isn’t old enough for it to have theoretically occurred. Thusly stable hydrogen is one of the least likely elements to be converted through natural processes- except into the simpler helium, usually inside a star from fusion.
A little extra depths is this- at high heat atoms tend to shed their electrons. So as theory goes, the “Big Bang” was VERY hot. This meant that after the Big Bang- most of the atomic matter in the universe was helium and hydrogen because they are simple and have few electrons (one for helium…) which is as small as an atom as we know it can basically be.
Over time the helium and hydrogen and some of the other rarer stuff spit out would form other elements and even stars- which stars then produce heavy elements, many of the unstable ones such as some uraniums etc. then decay and along with other elements release… hydrogen and/or helium!