The visible light spectrum of the Sun, which helps us understand not only its temperature and ionization, but the abundances of the elements present. Image credit: Nigel A. Sharp, NOAO/NSO/Kitt Peak FTS/AURA/NSF.

The scientific story of how each element was made

Think the periodic table is complicated? Now learn how each element in it was created.

“It is the function of science to discover the existence of a general reign of order in nature and to find the causes governing this order. And this refers in equal measure to the relations of man — social and political — and to the entire universe as a whole.” -Dmitri Mendeleev

There are over 100 elements in the periodic table, of which 91 are naturally found on Earth.

The primary source of the abundances of each of the elements found in the Universe today. A ‘small star’ is any star that isn’t massive enough to become a supergiant and go supernova; many elements attributed to supernovae may be better-created by neutron star mergers. Image credit: Periodic Table of Nucleosynthesis / Mark R. Leach / FigShare.

But at the moment of the Big Bang, none of them existed at all.

The early Universe was full of matter and radiation, and was so hot and dense that the quarks and gluons present didn’t form into individual protons and neutrons, but remained in a quark-gluon plasma. Image credit: RHIC collaboration, Brookhaven.

After the first second, quarks and gluons cooled to form bound states: protons and neutrons.

As matter and antimatter annihilate away in the early Universe, the leftover quarks and gluons cool to form stable protons and neutrons. Image credit: Ethan Siegel / Beyond The Galaxy.

After three minutes, the hot Universe fused those nucleons into helium and a tiny bit of…