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Showing posts with the label helium-4

This is the situation when all the elements were formed

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     Abundance of primordial elements.  -------------------------------------------      the Big Bang model it is possible to calculate the concentration of  helium-4 ,  helium-3 , deuterium, and  lithium-7  in the universe as ratios to the amount of ordinary hydrogen.The relative abundances depend on a single parameter, the ratio of  photons  to baryons. This value can be calculated independently from the detailed structure of  CMB  fluctuations. The ratios predicted (by mass, not by number) are about 0.25 for  4 He / H , about 10 −3  for  2 H / H , about 10 −4  for  3 He / H  and about 10 −9  for  7 Li / H . The measured abundances all agree at least roughly with those predicted from a single value of the baryon-to-photon ratio. The agreement is excellent for deuterium, close but formally discrepant for  4 He , and off by a factor of two for ...