Give a brief account of the abundance of chemical elements in the Universe

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

More massive atoms, such as gold atoms, are made only by short-lived nuclear reactions that occur during a supernova explosion. This explains why lower-mass atoms such as carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen are more common and why more massive atoms-such as gold, silver, platinum, and uranium-are so rare and, often, valuable.Most of the matter in stars is hydrogen and helium. Other elements, including carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and the rest of what astronomers call metals, were cooked up inside stars. When the galaxy first formed, there should have been no metals because stars had not yet manufactured any. Judging from the composition of stars in the oldest clusters, the gas from which the galaxy originally condensed must have contained about 90 percent hydrogen atoms and 10 percent helium atoms.