February 7, 2021
Humans have always looked to the stars and studied them. Over the past century, science has revealed the fundamental role stars play for nearly everything in existence, including the elements on the Periodic Table.
The birth, life and death of every star creates and disseminates the elements of the Periodic Table throughout the universe, a cycle that began nearly 14 billion years ago and repeats continuously today.
Without it, the Earth and everything on it – air, water, soil, plants, wildlife, and human life – would not exist.
Birth of stars and the first elements
Within the first three minutes following the Big Bang, the fundamental building blocks of matter formed and merged into the first element–hydrogen. Within a few hundred million years after the Big Bang, clouds of hydrogen gas condensed into the first stars. In the cores of those stars, intense heat and pressure fused hydrogen atoms to form helium and lithium.