Most organic molecules feature a lot of hydrogen that essentially serves as a placeholder for all the free bonds of carbon (and there is plenty!), oxygen, and nitrogen. Hydrogen is essentially the default thing to connect to about any organic molecule. And yes, it is primarily taken from water in the grand scheme of things.
To expand on that, hydrogen is just lone protons. Some of those protons pick up an electron, but if it’s a proton, it’s hydrogen. And considering that nuclear fusion is hard^[citation needed]^, it makes sense that one of the most common things to attach to other atoms would just be the smallest, most abundant, and most simple kind of atom out there.
Lovecraft Howard Philip called the author a clown. I don’t know if that’s an insult or a compliment, given the time period that would have had to be in. Clowns were cool at some point, right?
It was literally in the wiki you linked to lol. Though I was mistaken, it wasn’t Howard Philip Lovecraft, but “Philip Howard.”
Philip Howard, writing a lipogrammatic appraisal of A Void in his column Lost Words, said “This is a story chock-full of plots and sub-plots, of loops within loops, of trails in pursuit of trails, all of which allow its author an opportunity to display his customary virtuosity as an avant-gardist magician, acrobat and clown.”
Hydrogen is an electron and proton. I am guessing that most protons have been fully ionized many times since the beginning of the universe, thus not being complete intact atoms. Checkmate scientists!
I’m a biologist rather than a physicist, but I will take a swing at this.
Not really, although it depends on how you do your definitions. Most of the elements were formed by stars, which were themselves formed by the OG hydrogen, so hydrogen came first. So, first energy, then particles, then hydrogen, then stars and such, then oxygen and iron and all of those things.
It’s Hydrogen that’s existed since the universe cooled enough for electrons and protons to make atoms. Seconds after the big bang.
That’s most hydrogen.
It’s never been fused into heavier elements just still sticking around and caught in the planetary part of the solar system rather than the sun itself. Or any previous suns.
There’s some helium like that but most helium was formed inside suns later, and heavier elements all formed later in suns or supernovas.
heavier elements all formed later in suns or supernovas
Don’t forget neutron star collisions. Modern physics doesn’t think there’s enough energy in supernovae to create all the elements, so some must have come from neutron star collisions.
More like 380,000 years after the big bang you still needed everything to cool down and forces to separate and lots of other really cool stuff to happen before hydrogen could form.
It’s Hydrogen that’s existed since the universe cooled enough for electrons and protons to make atoms. Seconds after the big bang.
Atoms didn’t exist until 380,000 years after the big bang. Before that the universe was too dense for atoms to form and everything existed as a hot dense plasma where no electron could be captured by protons and neutrons. The protons that make up the nucleus of hydrogen did exist, it’s just that everything was too energetic to become an atom yet.
As far as I’m aware, protons don’t decay. If they formed at the beginning of the universe, they stick around until they get annihilated by anti-matter. But are we getting new protons after the universe formed? No idea.
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