Primordial elements

Although Peebles had himself recently completed a calculation of primordial element synthesis including helium (Peebles 1966). 

In this chapter we will first consider the underlying information on the elemental abundances and some of the implications of the isotopic abundances. Then, we will consider the nuclear processes that took place to produce the primordial elements and those that processed the primordial light elements into those that we have here on Earth. 

In this geometry the points are considered not as primary entities but rather as lumps of primordial elements that are not further resolvable. Here, the concept of probability is introduced so that the same two objects are sometimes treated as identical and sometimes as distinguishable. In this way Menger solved the Poincare dilemma of distinguishing between transitive mathematical and intransitive physical relations of equality. These lumps may be the seat of elementary particles or the size of the strings. In this geometry we have two basic notions (1) the concept of hazy or fuzzy lumps and (2) the statistical notion. 

In the West, the idea of the universe as arising from the ceaseless ebb and flow of an underlying medium may be traced to Pythagoras and Heraclitus. Whitehead s organismic philosophy makes the same assumption . ..we shall conceive each primordial element as a vibratory ebb and flow of an underlying energy, or activity (1967, p. 35). Whitehead has... 

In our Sun the pp-chain dominates over the CNO-cycle, producing about 98% of the total energy. A prerequisite for CNO-cycles is, of course, the existence of the elements C, N, O in the stellar plasma. Stars formed early in the Galaxy (first-generation stars) contain only primordial elements and thus are not able to burn hydrogen through a CNO-cycle at all. 

Two fundamental questions involve the number of chemical elements that can be found in nature and the limits of stability of matter in terms of nuclear mass and charge. The search for superheavy elements (SHEs) in nature is an attempt at answering the first question. The heaviest primordial element existing in large amounts is uranium (Herrmann 1979 Seaborg et al. 1979). The discovery of natural plutonium in trace amounts has been reported (Hoffinaim et al. 1971). Large-scale searches for superheavy elements in nature, most of them aimed at element 114, have been unsuccessful (Kratz 1983). 

To buttress his arguments against the tria prima. Van Helmont used experimental evidence. He argued that there were several bodies out of which the lire could only produce one or two of the tria prima or none at all [24]. Such bodies, he pointed out, were primarily gold and mercury, but also sand, flint and stones that do not contain hme [25]. He also maintained that water, one of his two primordial elements, could not be further reduced into the Paracelsian tria prima [26]. He also criticised the Paracelsian assumption that the salt obtained from urine was one of the tria prima, when in fact it was only salt water that had not been truly separated into its components [27]. 

Since our very beginnings on this planet, humans have had to deal with the four primordial elements as they were known in the ancient world earth, water, air and fire (and a fifth aether). Today, we speak of gases, liquids, minerals and vegetables, and finally energy. 

Section 9.2 of this chapter addresses the issue of stirring in a reactor. We introduce the primordial elements, from a mechanical point of view, for dimensioning a stirrer ... 

In summary, there was no evidence beyond a doubt for superheavy elements in Nature. Since improved theoretical calculations of half-lives tended with time to reach much shorter values than those required for occurrence in Nature, the enthusiasm for further searches ceased in the early 1980s. This colorful intermezzo in superheavy element research appeared to be finished, but remarkably, a search for primordial element 108 (hassium) in its homolog osmium was recently undertaken [84]. 

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