I have a basic understanding of it. But mostly just from what I learned in high school. Also some from watching Periodic Videos on YouTube. Eli5: But why are there radioactive and other dangerous elements?
In: Chemistry
Hi 🙂
The theory is that after the big bang, when everything cooled down enough, simple atoms formed from the “building blocks”, but only a lot of Hydrogen (in it’s most basic variant, you need just one proton), some Lithium.
Everything else was produced later.
Large clouds of hydrogen “clumped” together through their own gravity, to a point where these clouds got so dense and hot a fusion-process started: The first suns appeared.
Big ones. Didn’t last long.
Under extreme pressure, heat, fusion, it forms new elements.
The sun dies, a super nova occurs, and throws out a lot of stuff out into the universe again.
The elements clump together elsewhere, new suns form, again making all sort of new atoms. Helium, Carbon, Oxygen,Silicium… But once you get up to iron, that’s basically it.
Then, extreme events like super novae, blasting out matter, colliding with other matter, can make more complex atoms.
Some are not stable. They break into simpler atoms after a while, and that process can shoot out particles, radiation.
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