अपरा विद्या प्रवचन 1 (Apara Vidya Pravachan): The story of making elements

 (Debi Prasad Choudhary, 1973 10th standard)

The boy, who wanted to become a wise sadhu!

The story of making elements

 

Debi Prasad Choudhary

Los Angeles, April 2, 2023

 

Early in my youth, I knew that supreme God telling his best friend and disciple that I reside in all things1. Later, one of my teachers, Professor Jaspal, said, in the beginning we were all one, one point, how amazing is that idea! Much later, I learned from famous astrophysicist Carl Sagan that we are star stuff, that our body is made up of the elements that were manufactured in stars! So, what is the story, how are the elements like hydrogen, helium, oxygen, gold, silver and uranium made?

 

Elements like copper, gold, iron, platinum and phosphors were known for thousands of years in civilizations of India, China, Egypt but many other elements were discovered recently. For example, hydrogen and oxygen were discovered only in the late 18th century2. Helium was discovered during a total solar eclipse observation in India in 18683. Now, the question is that are these elements randomly structured or is there a systematic pattern in their structure? Early in the 19th century, a German chemist tried to group the elements of similar properties such as calcium, strontium, and barium; lithium, sodium, and potassium; and sulfur, selenium, and tellurium to study their common properties. During this time, various properties of these elements were determined. Dmitri Mendeleev, a Russian chemist in 1869 designed the periodic table and placed the known elements systematically and predicted the existence of elements at the locations of the table that did not have a suitable element at that time4.  This was a profound discovery that made progress in understanding the elemental properties. There was a steady progress of understanding of the systematics of elements on earth both through experiments by Rutherford and theories on most parts of the 20th century.

 

The next natural questions are how are these elements manufactured and who made them. I do not know the answer to the second part of the question, but certainly know the answer to the first part. The creation of the elements in the universe happened in stages as it evolved. In the beginning, about 13.7 billion years ago, the universe was tiny, hot, dense and bright, everything that we see today, the stars, galaxies, the light and the things we do not see (dark matter) were at one point. This is what professor Jaspal was referring to when he said we were one thing in the beginning. Perhaps this is what the Supreme God Krishna was trying to tell his best friend Arjun. This tiny bright universe has been expanding ever since it was born. We know this because the most distant galaxies move faster from us than the nearby galaxies as discovered by Edwin Hubble in Los Angeles in 1929. In the beginning, the baby expanding universe was filled with overheated neutral nuclear fluid, which is essentially highly compressed neutron gas. The neutron decayed into protons and electrons and captured some protons to make deuterium nuclei. Hydrogen only needs a proton and an electron, so it was produced when protons were born. Thus, the first elements of the universe were made in the beginning as described by three famous scientists 5Alpher, Bethe and Gamow in 1948. This phase of the universe was momentarily, so only light elements such as hydrogen, deuterium, lithium and beryllium were mostly created by this process. In 1988, 6Kailash Sahu more accurately determined the amount of lithium atoms produced in the baby universe. So, at the birth of the universe, only light elements such as hydrogen, helium, lithium and beryllium were created.

 

How were the rest of the elements like copper, gold, iron and carbon etc. produced? Some of them were produced inside the stars and at the time of their death! “How does the sun shine?” was not known in the beginning of last century. Physics was in a very primitive state, not many principles were discovered. Quantum physics and General Theory of Relativity were being developed by the brightest minds among human beings. At this time, a British astronomer Sir Arthur Eddington predicted that the sun must be producing energy by nuclear fusion in which two hydrogen nuclei are combined to produce a helium nucleus, which has smaller mass than the two hydrogen. The mass difference comes out in the form of energy. In 1939, 7Hans Bethe showed that the sun consumes about 600 million tons of hydrogen per second to produce 598 tons of helium. The rest 4 tons of mass is converted into energy that keeps the sun shining. This mechanism can produce elements up to iron, when combining elements of lower mass can produce elements higher mass and energy. To produce elements heavier than iron, energy has to be supplied instead of generating energy. This process, called nuclear fusion, works inside stars of different sizes and produces elements up to iron in the periodic table. How do we know that this is true? Because the same physical principles are used to make hydrogen bombs and that certainly works! The stars are controlled nuclear fusion reactors and the hydrogen bombs are uncontrolled nuclear fusion reactors.

 

The next question is, how are the elements heavier than iron produced? These are produced by neutron capture processes called s and r process. When stars heavier than the sun die, they produce enormous explosion in phenomenon called supernova. Such an event happened in our galaxy in 1910 and in one of our neighboring galaxy in 1987. In 1987, I was a student at Physical Research Laboratory, Ahmedabad. Some of us went to Ooty, to see this exploding star called Supernova 1987A, which remained bright for few days. During these events, neutrons of extremely high velocity are produced that are captured by nuclei of other elements around them including Iron. This process produces elements heavier than iron. This scheme of synthesizing elements in the universe was worked out by four brilliant scientists K. Margaret Burbridge, Geoffrey Burbridge, William, A. Fowler and Fred Hoyle. Willum Fowler received the Nobel Prize along with Subramaniam Chandrasekhar in 1983 for this work.

 

So, now we know how the elements in the universe are produced. They are produced in the stars, and we are made using these elements. Carl Sagan says we are star stuff. One thing is clear, nobody in this world is special. No matter where you are born in the world, you are the same as any other guy. Thinking that a group of people are special is a false notion. Claiming the special status is not only scientific error, it is contrary to the statement of Supreme God Krishna was trying to tell his best friend Arjun. If you see a star or a galaxy through a telescope, and try to understand a fraction of what I narrated here, you will not be the same person. You will be greater and not hate others. This is the knowledge that illuminates us and makes our lives richer.

 

1He says all things, not Hindu things or Muslim things or Christian things!

अहमात्मा गुडाकेश सर्वभूताशयस्थित: | अहमादिश्च मध्यं च भूतानामन्त एव च || Ch 10, Verse: 20||

 aham atma gudakesha sarva-bhutashaya-sthitah | aham adish cha madhyam cha bhutanam anta eva cha

O Arjun, I am seated in the heart of all living entities. I am the beginning, middle, and end of all beings.

2Cavendish, H. (1766). "XIX. Three papers, containing experiments on factitious air". Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. 56: 141–184. doi:10.1098/rstl.1766.0019. ISSN 0261-0523. S2CID 186209704., Cook, Gerhard A.; Lauer, Carol M. (1968). "Oxygen". In Clifford A. Hampel (ed.). The Encyclopedia of the Chemical Elements. New York: Reinhold Book Corporation. pp. 499–500. LCCN 68-29938.

3Kochhar, R. K. (1991). "French astronomers in India during the 17th – 19th centuries". Journal of the British Astronomical Association. 101 (2): 95–100. Bibcode:1991JBAA..101...95K

4Mendeleev, D. (1871). "The natural system of elements and its application to the indication of the properties of undiscovered elements". Journal of the Russian Chemical Society (in Russian). 3: 25–56. Archived from the original on 13 August 2017. Retrieved 23 August 2017.

5 Alpher, R. A, Bethe, H. and Gamow, G, 1948, Origin of elements, Physical Review Letters, 73, 803.

6Sahu, K, Sahu M., Pottasch, S. R., 1988, Astron. Astrophys, 207, L1

(Kailash Sahu studied physics in Berhampur University and Physical Research Laboratory, Ahmedabad)

7 Bethe, H., 1939, Energy production in Stars, Physical Review, 55, 434

Periodic Table: