11-8-19

LIGHT ELEMENTS & THE BIG BANG

- Beginning of the big bang scientist set the time at zero (0) second.
- Galaxies are formed; the distance between galaxies is small.
- Galaxies are moving away from each other.
- Distance between galaxies increases; stretched in space

BIG BANG THEORY

- Explains how the elements were initially formed the formation of different elements involved
many nuclear reactions, including fusion, fission and radioactivity decay
- It is the only existing cosmological model explaining the formation of the universe
- It is also helps explain the existence of light elements as hydrogen and helium and why they
are abundance
- Hydrogen, Helium and Lithium are called the light elements because they have very low
atomic mass compared with other.
- The atomic mass of hydrogen is 1.007 amu; that of helium is 4.003 amu; while that of lithium
is 6.941

INFLATION
- Is a theory of exponential expansion of space in the early universe
- The inflationary epoch lasted from 10−36 𝑠
- It involves expansion of space filled with energy
- The abundance of helium,hydrogen, and lithium involves fusion of subatomic particles like
protons and neutrons.
- Fusion occurs when “our universe is still young, hot and dense” which according to
astronomers occurred three second after the BIG BANG
- The formation of light elements involves the addition of proton and neutron to deuterium, a
stable isotope of hydrogen atom with the emission of gamma particle
- Deuterium is one of the three known isotopes of hydrogen and is sometimes called “heavy
hydrogen”

ISOTOPE
- It refers an atom with the same atomic number different atomic masses

THREE ISOTOPES OF HYDROGEN

𝑜𝑛𝑒 𝑛𝑒𝑢𝑡𝑟𝑜𝑛 𝑡𝑤𝑜 𝑛𝑒𝑢𝑡𝑟𝑜𝑛
𝐻1 𝐻2 𝐻3 }one proton
Protium Deuterium Tritium

- When deuterium isotope captures additional neutron another isotope of hydrogen called
tritium is formed plus the emission of neutron
- However, compared to deuterium (2H), Tritium (3H) is unstable compared to deuterium
- The formation of helium atoms involves the addition of proton to tritium nuclei

NUCLEOSYNTHESIS
- As the universe cooled, protons and neutrons can fuse to form heavier atoms nuclei

11-12-19
SYNTHESIS OF HELIUM IN THE SUN: THE PROTON-PROTON CHANGE

Proton Chain
According to Beck(2006), the sun converts six million tons of hydrogen into helium every
second. This conversion of matter generates 4x1026 watts of energy each second.
The formation of helium is described by the equation

2
H1 +3H1 -------> 4H2 +1n0

Since the formation of helium involves fusion of protons, the process called proton-proton or p-
chain process. It is the same process the sun uses to generate energy.
The series of equation below summarizes the proton-proton chain

1H+1H--->2H + e+ + 𝑦 (equation 1)
2H + 1H -----> 3He + 𝑦(equation 2)
3He + 3He ---> 4He + 2 1H (equation 3)

Proton-proton chain occurs in stars like the sun because its core temperature is 15million
kelvin only. The entire process yields 2.5 Mev (million electron volts) of energy. As long as there
is enough hydrogen in the star, the process continues and only stops when all hydrogen atoms
has been used up and converted to helium atoms. And when that happens, helium atoms will
fuse to form carbon atoms. This conversion of helium atoms into heavier atoms like carbon
happen once the internal core of the star collapses and heat up. This event is estimated to occur
roughly 4.5 to 5.5 billions however from now. Our sun will eventually use up all its supply of
hydrogen and helium and collapses a white dwarf (williams, 2006)
The CNO process described how carbon, nitrogen and oxygen are formed. It is a stellar
nucleosynthesis fuse hydrogen into helium via six-stage sequence of reactions shown below.
This CNO cycle was first proposed by Weizacker and Bethe.
 It occurs when the central temperature of the star is more than 1.5 million Kelvin carbon
fusion is the dominant process rather than hydrogen-fusion by adding proton to carbon nuclei,
carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen serve as a catalyst to produce helium. They speed up the
reaction without being consumed in the process. It is important to remember that in the CNo
process, the number of carbon, nitrogen and oxygen atoms does not change during the whole
process. They serve to transform four protons to one helium nuclei.

1. 12
C6 + 1H1 ---> 13N1+𝑦
2. 13
N7 --->13C6+e++𝑦
3. 13
C6+1H1 ---> 13N7+𝑦
4. 12
N7+1H1 ---> 15O8+𝑦
5. 15
O8 ---> 15N7+ e+ +𝑦
6. 15
N7+1H1 - 17C6 + 4He2

PROTON-PROTON CHAIN REACTION

The sun’s energy produced by hydrogen fusion,a sequence of the molecules in which four
hydrogen nuclei combine to produce a single helium nucleus: called proton- proton chain
reaction.
● Two protons collide
● One of the proton
changes into a neutron, a
neutral nearly massless
neutrino (ⱱ), and a positively
charged electron or positron
(e+)
● The proton and
neutron from a hydrogen
isotope(2H) the positron
encounters an ordinary
electron (e-), annihilating
both particles and
converting them into gamma
ray (𝒚)