I recently became really interested in learning about physics and cosmology, but I still know very little. Hopefully someone with more knowledge will be able to shed some light on my questions.
Here are my presumptions (please correct me if I'm mistaken):
- $t_{0}$: Big Bang.
- The Universe expands (and thus cools) sufficiently to allow the formation of atoms.
- The early Universe mostly consists of Hydrogen and is not uniform in its geometry.
- Gravity pushes lumps of matter together until their density (temperature) is so high that nuclear fusion kicks off. The first giant stars are born.
- Some heavy elements are created in these stars and when they explode, sufficient temperatures are reached to form heavier elements still.
- All of the successive stars and planets are the product of these original stars.
My questions:
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If the amount of Hydrogen is finite in the Universe and each successive generation of stars use up most of their Hydrogen, what is the theoretical maximum number of generations of stars that our Universe can support? A ballpark figure in terms of years is fine too. 😉
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Are there some special physical processes that occur in the Universe on a large enough scale that are able to break up heavy elements (i.e., Helium) into lighter elements (i.e., Hydrogen)? Kind of like a cosmic recycling operation.
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If we discount the possibility of a Big Crunch, is the Universe pretty much headed into a time when there will be no more stars and only a bunch of black holes, planets, and other debris?
Best Answer
Tis, a good question. Two related questions arise from it. The first one is, will the hydrogen all be used up in finite time? The second related one is, will star formation completely stop in finite time? They sound related, but the first result doesn't necessarily imply the same result for the second, or vice versa. I.E. a low but nonzero gas density might possibly not allow further star formation, and maybe we could have no hydrogen, but have other types of gas (or even solid objects) still collect into stellar mass objects.
I don't know for sure the answers. The rate of star formation (and hydrogen consumption) could decline slowly enough as to never formally reach zero. Or not.
We do know that a lot of gas gets blown out of galaxies by massive stars, supernova, and black hole activity, and becomes intergalactic gas -usually staying within the galaxy cluster. On a long time scale this should eventually fall back into the cluster's galaxies. So I would think the star formation rate would have a very long tail.