Cosmological lithium problem: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 04:07, 8 May 2020

Revision as of 21:17, 8 May 2020

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Minutes after the Big Bang, the universe was made almost entirely of hydrogen and helium, with trace amounts of lithium and beryllium, and negligibly small abundances of all heavier elements.<ref name="habitable"/>

===Lithium Synthesissynthesis in the Big Bang===

Big-bang Bang nucleosynthesis producesproduced both lithium-7 and beryllium-7, and indeed the latter dominates the primordial synthesis of mass- 7 productionnuclides. On the other hand, the bigBig bangBang producesproduced lithium-6 at levels more than 1000 times smaller.

{{nuclide|link=yes|beryllium|7}} later decaysdecayed via [[electron capture]] ([[half-life]] 53.22 days) into {{nuclide|link=yes|lithium|7}},

so that the observable primordial lithium abundance essentially sums primordial {{nuclide|link=yes|lithium|7}}+ and [[radiogenic]] lithium from the decay of {{nuclide|link=yes|beryllium|7}}.

These isotopes