What are the three elements found in all others?

Question

In my college astronomy class we discussed the big bang theory. It shot out three elements that are found in all others. What are these, I know one is carbon.

Answer 1

You mean that are found in all stars and planets? Hydrogen, carbon and helium. Helium is found inside the earth but keeps escaping because of its light density. Hydrogen is found fixed as water and hydrocarbons.

Answer 2

It's not quite as simple as that.

The Big Bang started out with just energy and quarks, and later protons. Then, the protons formed the first hydrogren atoms. These hydrogren atoms then aggregated into the first stars, and through a process called Big Bang nucleosynthesis (when the universe was between 100 and 300 seconds old), these hydrogren atoms formed deuterium, tritium and helium (and a small amount of lithium).

Later, another process called stellar nucleosynthesis occurred where through a similar process, the helium and hydrogen atoms fused into larger atoms such as carbon, neon, oxygen and other elements up until iron. Once turning into iron, the process stops, and the star keeps aggregating iron in its center until finally, there's too much iron to keep the fusion reaction going, and the star then goes supernova.

During the supernova period, the elements are fused into even heavier elements and the star explodes into the universe (through a reaction called, not surprisingly, "explosive nucleosynthesis"), sending out the elements of what we now know to be the periodic table of elements.

I'm leaving out a few steps, but that's the basic process. As you can see, there were not 3 elements at the beginning, but through a couple of processes, we ended up with most of the elements we now know today (not counting the artificially-created ones)

Answer 3

hydrogen and helium. Basic nuclear reactions use these two elements all the time, plus they are very simple thus could be found in other elements.

Answer 4

I think you mean protons, neutrons and electrons, and those didn't form until photons degraded from energy loss.

Carbon didn't form until at least the first fusion reaction in a star

Answer 5

oxegen
hidrogen