Monday, October 1, 2012

The Baby Bang?

Chinese fireworks
Gunpowder in ancient China
There certainly are impressive stellar fireworks out there in outer space and supernovas even in our own habitat, the Milky Way!

Astrophysics say that huge explosion of a star at least three times more massive than Sun creates enough energy and heat for the fusion of three helium atoms into one carbon atom. Such galactic bangs are responsible for the star dust that contains all the elements we know from the periodic table and of which rocky planets are made of.

A star merely the size of Sun generates enough heat only to allow the fundamental fusion of hydrogen to helium to take place and then some (to put it simply).

According to current view these nuclear fusions began only some time after the Big Bang and it took time for the massive stars to evolve that produce heavier elements. Astrophysicists do not expect to find spectral lines of carbon or other heavy elements in images that are taken from the early Universe some 13 billion years ago.

Baby Bang
All this makes sense according to the laws of nuclear physics and mathematical formulas can define pretty accurately the time line of the development of matter in early cosmos (take or leave some dark energy and matter...)

But still the Baby Bang puzzles me!

For the initial bang bang only produced hydrogen atoms if I understand the story of the birth of the cosmos right. Only by time the increasing force of gravity came into picture causing the collapse of molecular clouds giving birth to stars which joined into galaxies and super-galaxies and who knows what.

I have assumed that the Big Bang must have been the Mother of All Bangs and much more massive than some local supernova blowing its head off in a galaxy here or there.

After all, the entire cosmos began in that original powerful explosion and huge galaxies are flying away from the location of the bang with increasing speed even defying gravity. There surely should be enormous energy and heat enough to make even uranium.

But no.

So how come that the Big Bang was not able to generate enough energy for more than the formation of hydrogen atoms?

What Big Bang is that explosion less powerful than the Sun?

Baby Bang!

I wonder does the lack of gravity play a role here?

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