Latest ideas about the Big Bang Theory

And I just want to ask the question... if all the heavy elements that we are made of are created from the explosion of stars, why didn't these atoms burn up from the exploding supernova?

http://news.softpedia.com/news/Scientists-Saved-the-Big-Bang-Theory-38865.shtml

Originally posted by arrakis
And I just want to ask the question... if all the heavy elements that we are made of are created from the explosion of stars, why didn't these atoms burn up from the exploding supernova?

http://news.softpedia.com/news/Scientists-Saved-the-Big-Bang-Theory-38865.shtml

Originally posted by stocken
An atom can't burn. Can it? As I understand it, fire is really just a process where certain elements of a material are released due to great heat. No?

So, if you take wood, expose it to heat, and combined with oxygen the wood will at a temperature of about... what?.. 200 Celsius, release certain particles. We see this as smoke. The flames are heated air.* ...[text shortened]... t. The heat that rise from the burning spot thus emit light, hence the flames.

Fascinating.

I remember "The First three Minutes" by Steven Weinberg as being a very good book on the start of the universe.

It must be over 20 years since I read it though, so i can't remember any detail.

it appears to have been updated for the 2nd edition.
http://www.amazon.com/First-Three-Minutes-Origin-Universe/dp/0465024378

Originally posted by AThousandYoung
"Burning" is when molecules are oxidized by the O2 from the air. It's an exothermic reaction - that is, it gives off heat.

see also
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stellar_nucleosynthesis
Production of elements heavier than iron:
* Neutron capture:
o The R-process
o The S-process
* Proton capture:
o The P-process

Originally posted by aging blitzer
It must be over 20 years since I read it though, so i can't remember any detail.

Originally posted by kmax87
asuming that three minutes is all it takes to make one.

Originally posted by aging blitzer
That's a big assumption.
The book is about what happened in the first three minutes of the universe.
How long it took to get the thing that the big bang came from into the state in which it was ready to go BANG is probably an unknown unknown.

Originally posted by stocken
Ye, isn't that in essence what I wrote? 😕

Originally posted by AThousandYoung
No. You wrote that "atoms can't burn" but sodium atoms for example are quite flammable. You seemed to suggest that the releasing of visible particles is essential to burning, but it's not. The particles that make up smoke, in fact, are visible precisely because they are incompletely burned. If they were fully burned they'd be carbon dioxide and water ...[text shortened]... chemical reaction except incidentally by mentioning that you had to expose wood to oxygen.

Originally posted by darvlay
He said that "an atom can't burn" and he is more or less right, although burn is a horrible word to use in this context as we mostly associate it with a visual phenomenon.

Originally posted by AThousandYoung
I disagree. There are many atoms which are quite capable of being oxidized in a combustion reaction and which are found free; that is, not in molecular form. Sodium is one example.

http://www.ucc.ie/academic/chem/dolchem/html/dict/combust.html

Originally posted by AThousandYoung
I disagree. There are many atoms which are quite capable of being oxidized in a combustion reaction and which are found free; that is, not in molecular form. Sodium is one example.

http://www.ucc.ie/academic/chem/dolchem/html/dict/combust.html

Originally posted by scottishinnz
I think we're talking at crossed purposes here. ATY is right, the sodium atoms can be oxidised (and I propose that we use oxidation, rather than burn), but BdN was really pointing out that the sodium atoms survive the process! A case of muddy thinking, but I believe BdN's answer whilst technically not perfect, is probably less obfuscatory to a non-che ...[text shortened]... I know that it wasn't ATY's intention) that the sodium atoms are "used up" or destroyed.