Abundance of the chemical elements stars. Lithium, beryllium and boron are rare because although they are produced by nuclear fusion, they are then destroyed by other reactions in the stars. The elements from carbon to iron are relatively more common in the universe because of the ease of making them in supernova nucleosynthesis. Elements of higher atomic number than iron (element 26) become progressively more rare in the universe, because they increasingly absorb stellar energy in being produced. Elements with even atomic numbers are generally more common than their neighbors in the periodic table, also due to favorable energetics of formation. The abundance of elements
Periodic table of shapes Periodic table of shapes The periodic table of mathematical shapes is popular name given to a project to classify Fano varieties. The project was thought up by Professor Alessio Corti, from the Department of Mathematics at Imperial College London. It aims to categorise all three-, four- and five-dimensional shapes into a single table, analogous to the periodic table of chemical elements. It is meant to hold the equations that describe each shape and, through this, mathematicians and other scientists expect to develop a better understanding of the shapes’ geometric properties and relations. It is estimated that 500 million shapes can