section_path: Origin of the elements
section_name: Origin of the elements
paragraph_text: Origin of the elements
  
  Only about 4% of the total mass of the universe is made of atoms or ions, and thus represented by elements. This fraction is about 15% of the total matter, with the remainder of the matter (85%) being dark matter. The nature of dark matter is unknown, but it is not composed of atoms of elements because it contains no protons, neutrons, or electrons. (The remaining non-matter part of the mass of the universe is composed of the even less well understood dark energy).
  
  The 94 naturally occurring elements were produced by at least four classes of astrophysical process. Most of the hydrogen, helium and a very small quantity of lithium were produced in the first few minutes of the Big Bang. This Big Bang nucleosynthesis happened only once; the other processes are ongoing. Nuclear fusion inside stars produces elements through stellar nucleosynthesis, including all elements from carbon to iron in atomic number. Elements higher in atomic number than iron, including heavy elements like uranium and plutonium, are produced by various forms of explosive nucleosynthesis in supernovae and neutron star mergers. The light elements lithium, beryllium and boron are produced mostly through cosmic ray spallation (fragmentation induced by cosmic rays) of carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen.
  
  In the early phases of the Big Bang, nucleosynthesis of hydrogen resulted in the production of hydrogen-1 (protium, H) and helium-4 (He), as well as a smaller amount of deuterium (H) and tiny amounts (on the order of 10) of lithium and beryllium. Even smaller amounts of boron may have been produced in the Big Bang, since it has been observed in some very old stars, while carbon has not. No elements heavier than boron were produced in the Big Bang. As a result, the primordial abundance of atoms (or ions) consisted of ~75% H, 25% He, and 0.01% deuterium, with only tiny traces of lithium, beryllium, and perhaps boron. Subsequent enrichment of galactic halos occurred due to stellar nucleosynthesis and supernova nucleosynthesis. However, the element abundance in intergalactic space can still closely resemble primordial conditions, unless it has been enriched by some means.
  
  On Earth (and elsewhere), trace amounts of various elements continue to be produced from other elements as products of nuclear transmutation processes. These include some produced by cosmic rays or other nuclear reactions (see cosmogenic and nucleogenic nuclides), and others produced as decay products of long-lived primordial nuclides. For example, trace (but detectable) amounts of carbon-14 (C) are continually produced in the air by cosmic rays impacting nitrogen atoms, and argon-40 (Ar) is continually produced by the decay of primordially occurring but unstable potassium-40 (K). Also, three primordially occurring but radioactive actinides, thorium, uranium, and plutonium, decay through a series of recurrently produced but unstable elements such as radium and radon, which are transiently present in any sample of containing these metals. Three other radioactive elements, technetium, promethium, and neptunium, occur only incidentally in natural materials, produced as individual atoms by nuclear fission of the nuclei of various heavy elements or in other rare nuclear processes.
  
  Besides the 94 naturally occurring elements, several artificial elements have been produced by nuclear physics technology. By 2016, these experiments had produced all elements up to atomic number 118.