A science blog with Eric Berger

Big problem: The Big Bang Theory’s stars are high on lithium


Warning: Science content ahead.

















Eric Berger

30 Responses

  1. supermonkey says:

    I admit a lot of that went over my head, but I can happily say that I learned something today. The fact that the universe was at one point 1 nonillion degrees, and that it cooled to only 1 billion degrees in a matter of minutes, is just mind-bogglingly fascinating.

    Thanks for sharing this information!

  2. supermonkey says:

    Sorry for the double-post, but I was just looking at the provided link to the Big Bang Nucleosynthesis, and it mentions that the temperature rapidly cooled from 10^32 to 10^9 degrees Kelvin, not celsius. I thought 10^9 = 1 billion. Math was never my strong point so perhaps I’m in error here, but I’m curious if you’ve recalculated the numbers and converted to a different temperature measurement.

    • Eric Berger says:

      At those kinds of powers of 10, Kelvin and Celsius are interchangeable. And since Celsius is more familiar to the public mind, I went with that.

    • supermonkey says:


      Interesting, that. After I posted my question, I starting poking around with some conversions, and it appears that yes, once you go high enough, Kelvin, Celcius are close enough that I guess it really doesn’t matter. At that scale, Fahrenheit is almost close enough to call it even.

      The universe truly is a weird, wonderful place.

    • ScientistMike says:

      supermonkey, we have to say “No” to your comment “At that scale, Fahrenheit is almost close enough to call it even. ”

      The reason we can do it with Celsius and Kelvin is they are the same scale, just offset by 273. So when you are dealing with numbers larger than say 1 Million degrees, the 273 degree difference is less than 0.1%, so relative to Houston summer, it would be like trying to feel the difference in 100 degrees and 100.0273 degrees.

      But Fahrenheit is a different scale, 1 Celsius or 1 Kelvin degree is 1.8 Fahrenheit degrees. So if you are dealing with 1 Billion degrees Celsius or Kelvin, that is very close to 1.8 Billion degrees Fahrenheit.

    • Eric Berger says:

      When I was an astronomy student two decades ago, I was taught that if astronomers got within an order of magnitude of the correct answer they were doing well.

    • ScientistMike says:

      Eric, that may be true, but it is also true that if you reduce variability where you can, then you have a better chance of getting within an order of magnitude of the correct value! :)

      However that is mostly irrelevant to the 1.0 to 1.8 ratio of Kelvin and Fahrenheit degrees, scales that are established, not determined experimentally.

    • JohnD says:


      An order of magnitude (which allows for the missing pi hiding somewhere in the equation) and a sign change (which allows for the imaginary part of the solution) is the rule.


    • Steve C. says:

      I’m sure you’ve probably heard about the astronomer who volunteered to be cooled to absolute zero.

      He’s 0K now.

  3. lil ol me says:

    The models might be wrong? Obviously if the facts do not conform to the theory, they must be discarded. Or adjusted…..

    • JohnD says:

      What they discarded wasn’t the facts (the observations) but the interpretation of the facts (“a peak at this frequency means this”) and they discarded them based on an improved understanding (what scientists call “a model”) of how the elements behave in stellar interiors.

  4. Jim_935 says:

    Eric, sort of a picky point. The article states “… predict that only six light elements were formed, two isotopes each of hydrogen, helium, and lithium.” Actually, that’s only 3 elements with 2 isotopes of each. Maybe ” … predict that only six types of atoms were formed …”?

    • ScientistMike says:

      That is correct, Jim, good catch. I am a Chemist and I missed that at first reading. :)

      On the subject, just a couple of weeks ago I saw the program, “Nova: Hunting the Elements”. Excellent discussion of the history of the periodic table of elements, isotopes, etc and for those who have a Netflix streaming account, it is available as a streaming video.

    • StanleyS says:

      The article should have said that only six nuclides of three light elements are formed.

  5. Jack says:

    Some, probably many, would argue that the world of astrophysics and science in general should be more concerned with the future of this planet instead of the past history of this planet.

    Big Bang or no Big Bang, doesn’t really make a difference today except to a few MENSA candidates.

    • Eric Berger says:

      One might argue that, but they would be wrong. One thing that makes humans humans is the ability to ask and investigate such questions.

    • StanleyS says:

      One thing that makes humans uniquely special among all of the animal species is that only humans are capable of wanting to understand the universe in which they live. And we present humans are living in an age when that understanding is finally becoming very substantial. Isn’t that just absolutely wonderful? We as a species are not insignificant, because we are the species that has figured out what the universe is.

  6. craig says:

    Hopefully that Lithium-6 being out there ultimately proves true. That would mean China no longer have a lock on this material which is so valuable for making low weight high capacity batteries. And NASAs efforts to find and tow an asteroid close to earth for further study could work well here to. They could just switch from asteroid towing to lithium loaded star towing and our energy problems would be solved. Take that OPEC.

    But on the downside this Big Bang theory busting observation will support the flat earth group’s thinking that because the missing link has not been discovered that it proves the Earth was created in seven days and man was created as he stands today.

    Science got to love it.

  7. KEG says:

    Wow!! Talk about climate change. Who were the freakin lifeforms that caused this to happen?

  8. 32SII says:

    So the Big Bang Theory says we shouldn’t see Li-6, proponents of the BBT review data and say “you didn’t REALLY see Li-6,” and now we’re convinced that it solves the paradox? If they didn’t see Li-6 (not saying that they did), then what DID they see?

  9. nicholas suntzeff says:

    JohnD is right. It is something akin to microturbulence. The spectrum of the Sun shows millions of dark lines corresponding to the elements in the cool outer layers of the Sun. Lithium is unusual in that it is so sensitive to temperature that the lines predominantly form in the downdrafts of the convection cells at the surface. Thus the lines of lithium are complicated by the redshifted Doppler velocities of the downdrafts, and the radiation from the hot updrafts that heat the downdrafts as they rise. Normally when we study the abundance of the elements in the outer layers of the stars, we can treat the outer layers of a star in a purely radial fashion – that is, we can estimate a temperature and gravity of the star as a function of radius and forget about all the light leaking azimuthally. What this group did was to calculate the 3D passage of light through these complicated convection cells, taking in to account the Doppler shifts, the discontinuous changes in temperature azimuthally, and the hydrodynamics.

    You would think this is done rather than the crude approximations of assuming only radial changes in temp and gravity. But this is a really tough calculation, and only recently have we had the computing power to do this.

  10. Bill in Houston says:

    (Knock knock knock)

    (Knock knock knock)

    (Knock knock knock)

  11. Kevin says:

    My God man! Im a doctor not a physicist! Lol