Thread: Oxygen Molecules Discovered In Space for the First Time

Meh.

How come oxygen is the third most common?

Originally Posted by Xei

Meh.

How come oxygen is the third most common?

Wow...I'm surprised a know-it-all like yourself doesn't know this. It's because the light elements are formed through stellar fusion, and H fusing with He to form Li is a relatively rare reaction compared to He+ He

You added nothing to my knowledge; implying oxygen is the element after lithium was a funny joke though.

maybe he was implying beryllium fusion is common?

Originally Posted by Xei

Meh.

How come oxygen is the third most common?

My guess would be a combination of it's small structure and it's position in the periodic table. It's fairly lightweight, so it can probably be creating in fusion in some of the larger stars. Our sun probably won't, but it's relatively small. It's also on the left of the periodic table, so it's fairly stable and non-reactive.

Originally Posted by Xei

Meh.

How come oxygen is the third most common?

My guess is what it said in the article, "that oxygen is locked up in water ice that coats tiny dust grains." There's a lot of random dust floating about the universe.

Originally Posted by Xei

You added nothing to my knowledge; implying oxygen is the element after lithium was a funny joke though.

I implied no such thing. I said that stellar fusion skips lithium, not that oxygen is element 4...Learn to read?

so what would the stellar fusion process skipping lithium have to do with producing oxygen?

It looks like that before a supernova, stars have multiple "shells" with differing nuclear chemistry, and oxygen happens to be produced in more "shells" than the elements below it.

Originally Posted by Wayfaerer

so what would the stellar fusion process skipping lithium have to do with producing oxygen?

Well, if we naively look at proton count alone, one would expect lithium to be the third most abundant element in the universe. But much more important is that certain nuclear reactions are more exothermic (produce more stable products more readily) than others. And it turns out, generally speaking, even atomic numbers are more stable than odd. And of course there are higher level rules that also come into play (the "magic numbers" of protons and neutrons). These factors conspire to make certain elements unusually abundant, like oxygen.

The only reason I was in this thread was because I was shocked the self-proclaimed genius Xei didn't know basic stellar chemistry. Hell, I learned this stuff in high school.

and H fusing with He to form Li is a relatively rare reaction compared to He+ He (to form O)

lol ok bro

Originally Posted by cmind

Well, if we naively look at proton count alone, one would expect lithium to be the third most abundant element in the universe. But much more important is that certain nuclear reactions are more exothermic (produce more stable products more readily) than others. And it turns out, generally speaking, even atomic numbers are more stable than odd. And of course there are higher level rules that also come into play (the "magic numbers" of protons and neutrons). These factors conspire to make certain elements unusually abundant, like oxygen.

The only reason I was in this thread was because I was shocked the self-proclaimed genius Xei didn't know basic stellar chemistry. Hell, I learned this stuff in high school.

I wouldn't rule out being honest and curious about things you're not sure about being an aspect of genius. Science isn't an established set of facts that you memorize in order to be "smart" or a "genius". Science is ever evolving and debatable, your epistemology, your method, is going to be more valuable than remembering things you were told in books in high school. Only being in a place that was meant for impersonal curiosity about the universe to attempt to put someone down for their honest questions is not the best method lol and is probably not a place you should be.

Despite nucleosynthesis being relatively niche and academic, my physics exam board did actually happen to cover it all back in school: the stuff I was curious about cmind explained as 'magic', which is about as specific as he ever cares to get. That is, when he isn't being hilariously wrong about the basics, of course.

Xei, you're going to be a very miserable and lonely person.

did it cross you mind that most of the universe is dark matter and we don`t know wtf that is, so let`s consider it a strange quantum soup which likes to transform itself into these molecules, because those molecules might be subharmonics of a major string, so that`s the easiest thing for it to do???

ummmmm

no, not star trek

String theory - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Originally Posted by cmind

Xei, you're going to be a very miserable and lonely person.

> Be gratuitously rude and condescending to me for the 50th time
> Epically fuck up again
> I facepalm
> "you're going to be very miserable and lonely"