abundance

Why did the Universe start off with Hydrogen, Helium, and not much else?

esiegel | July 5, 2013

"I see a lot of new faces. But, you know the old saying, 'out with the old, in with the nucleus.'" -The Simpsons Looking around the Universe today, there's no doubt that there's plenty of hydrogen and helium around; after all, it's the nuclear fusion of hydrogen into helium that powers the vast majority of stars illuminating the entire cosmos! Image credit: ESA/Hubble, NASA and H. Ebeling. But here on Earth, hydrogen and helium are only a small part of the world we inhabit. By mass, hydrogen and helium combined make up far less than 1% of the Earth, and even if we restrict ourselves to the…