Chapter 4

Summary:
After the discovery of the Big Bang theory, many scientist were eager to unravel many mysterious origins including the creation of the elements. At first, it was believed that they were not created, they just are, but further investigation lead many scientist to believed elements were created from stars. Since stars go through the process of fusion, it fuses two hydrogen to create one helium, the byproduct. Although, stars are also said to contain other elements besides hydrogen and helium. This puzzled many scientist because the Big Bang theory was said to spread out elements uniformly. Astronomers, the one responsible for the papers B2FH, solved this question by suggesting that the stars produce them themselves. This is because when stars are limited of hydrogen, they must keep creating energy by fussing helium instead. When two helium fuse, they get either lithium, boron, beryllium, or carbon elements. Then when the star runs out of the other elements, it starts fussing the next byproducts. This process will continue until it starts creating iron because that is when fussing elements above it will require more energy than it produces. When the supernova occurs, there is plenty energy to fuse other heavier elements to the rest of the elements from the Periodic Table.
After a certain supernova, our solar system began to form starting with the sun, then the gas giants, and finally the rocky planets. The gas giants fascinated scientist so much that the even named elements which had no relationship to the planets. The reason is because elements can freely become in any forms not possible on earth. This can be said more on Jupiter because it is considered as a failed star. Since it has some qualities of a star, it is able to do a lot with these elements. It was questioned that Jupiter may have formed a large diamond in its core, this is how much they believe Jupiter is to them. The rocky planets are a different story since all the elements gathered together to create the core to the crust.
Figuring out how the past was shouldn't of been possible without the the special properties of certain elements. Uranium and lead were used to identify the age of planet Earth since uranium decays to different lead isotopes. Iridium was used to discover many meteors asteroids, and comets which began the dinosaurs extinction. Also, rhenium, the decayed element from Iridium, identified the possibility of periodic asteroids to approach the Earth. Later on, it was confirmed that the sun isn't really the center of everything; it also moves around the Milky Way and goes up and down perpendicular to our galaxy. This is the reason why the probability is high when considering periodic asteroids. In the end, hydrogen is the start of every element which means that "We are all star stuff."

Reflection:
I wonder how the B2FH were able to discover the origin of all elements since all they did was explain from where they came from and not how they figure it out. It may be common sense to look it the way they looked at it but its interesting what made them reach to that conclusion. In the end, they were proven correct which is a little unreal because everything they said were conjectures. It really shows how a real scientist is, a person who is able to think of every possibility as an answer to the question and figure out which makes could not be the answer. Also, I was interested how although scientist knew about fusion as the method to keep the stars alive, they weren't able to realize that not only hydrogen were fusing together in the core. I guess the technology is part of this problem since as technology improved, it helped prove the paper B2FH.
I always learned about decaying when analyzing a dead organism but it can also be used to finding other parts of history. It is an impressive method of comparing the ration of a common element to its decayed element from the past and its present ratio in order to learn more about the past. For history, people would never be able to debate whether historical information proven by science is true or false because everything in science is a fact until proven otherwise. This could be compared to the US judicial system works, until proven guilty, the prosecutor will be considered not guilty.