Which element is the most abundant on earth. Rating of the most important chemical elements and compounds. The Ten Most Common Elements in the Milky Way Galaxy
We all know that hydrogen fills our Universe by 75%. But do you know what other chemical elements there are that are no less important for our existence and play a significant role for the life of people, animals, plants and our entire Earth? The elements from this rating form our entire Universe!
10. Sulfur (abundance relative to silicon – 0.38)
This chemical element in the periodic table it is listed under the symbol S and is characterized by atomic number 16. Sulfur is very abundant in nature.
9. Iron (abundance relative to silicon – 0.6)
Denoted by the symbol Fe, atomic number – 26. Iron is very common in nature, especially important role it plays in the formation of the inner and outer shell of the Earth's core.
8. Magnesium (abundance relative to silicon – 0.91)
In the periodic table, magnesium can be found under the symbol Mg, and its atomic number is 12. What is most amazing about this chemical element is that it is most often released when stars explode during the process of their transformation into supernovae.
7. Silicon (abundance relative to silicon – 1)
Denoted as Si. The atomic number of silicon is 14. This blue-gray metalloid is very rarely found in the earth's crust in its pure form, but is quite common in other substances. For example, it can even be found in plants.
6. Carbon (abundance relative to silicon – 3.5)
Carbon in the periodic table of chemical elements is listed under the symbol C, its atomic number is 6. The most famous allotropic modification of carbon is one of the most desirable precious stones in the world - diamonds. Carbon is also actively used in other industrial purposes for more everyday purposes.
5. Nitrogen (abundance relative to silicon – 6.6)
Symbol N, atomic number 7. First discovered by Scottish physician Daniel Rutherford, nitrogen most often occurs in the form of nitric acid and nitrates.
4. Neon (abundance relative to silicon – 8.6)
It is designated by the symbol Ne, atomic number is 10. It is no secret that this particular chemical element is associated with a beautiful glow.
3. Oxygen (abundance relative to silicon – 22)
A chemical element with the symbol O and atomic number 8, oxygen is essential to our existence! But this does not mean that it is present only on Earth and serves only for human lungs. The universe is full of surprises.
2. Helium (abundance relative to silicon – 3,100)
The symbol for helium is He, the atomic number is 2. It is colorless, odorless, tasteless, non-toxic, and its boiling point is the lowest of all chemical elements. And thanks to him, the balls soar skyward!
1. Hydrogen (abundance relative to silicon – 40,000)
The true number one on our list, hydrogen is found in the periodic table under the symbol H and has atomic number 1. It is the lightest chemical element on the periodic table and the most abundant element in the entire known universe.
Oxygen is the most abundant chemical element on earth, and what is the second most abundant element?
- The most common element in my opinion is NITROGEN.
- Oxygen 49.5%
Silicon 25.3%P.S.
Carbon 0.1%, nitrogen 0.01%, hydrogen 0.97% cannot possibly be second in abundance
And H2O is not a chemical element, but a substance :) - Silicon. 26% by weight in the earth's crust.
- Carbon, (all vegetation).
- In its pure form, silicon was isolated in 1811 by French scientists Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac and Louis Jacques Thénard.
In 1825 Swedish chemist Jns Jacob Berzelius obtained pure elemental silicon by the action of potassium metal on silicon fluoride SiF4. The new element was given the name silicium (from the Latin silex flint). The Russian name silicon was introduced in 1834 by the Russian chemist German Ivanovich Hess. Translated into Greek kremnos cliff, mountain.
In terms of abundance in the earth's crust, silicon ranks second among all elements (after oxygen). Weight earth's crust 27.629.5% consists of silicon. Silicon is a component of several hundred different natural silicates and aluminosilicates. The most common is silica or silicon (IV) oxide SiO2 ( river sand, quartz, flint, etc.), constituting about 12% of the earth's crust (by mass). Silicon does not occur in free form in nature.
Crystal lattice of silicon is cubic face-centered like diamond, parameter a = 0.54307 nm (at high pressures Other polymorphic modifications of silicon have also been obtained), but due to the longer bond length between SiSi atoms compared to the length of the C C bond, the hardness of silicon is significantly less than that of diamond. Silicon is fragile, only when heated above 800 C does it become a plastic substance. Interestingly, silicon is transparent to infrared radiation.
Elementary silicon is a typical semiconductor. Band gap at room temperature 1.09 eV. The concentration of charge carriers in silicon with intrinsic conductivity at room temperature is 1.51016 m-3. The electrical properties of crystalline silicon are greatly influenced by the microimpurities it contains. To obtain silicon single crystals with hole conductivity, additives of group III elements - boron, aluminum, gallium and indium - are introduced into silicon; with electronic conductivity, additives of elements V group phosphorus, arsenic or antimony. The electrical properties of silicon can be varied by changing the processing conditions of single crystals, in particular, by treating the silicon surface with various chemical agents.
Currently, silicon is the main material for electronics. Monocrystalline silicon material for gas laser mirrors. Sometimes silicon (commercial grade) and its alloy with iron (ferrosilicon) are used to produce hydrogen in the field. Compounds of metals with silicon, silicides, are widely used in industry (for example, electronic and nuclear) materials with a wide range of useful chemical, electrical and nuclear properties (resistance to oxidation, neutrons, etc.), and silicides of a number of elements are important thermoelectric materials. Silicon is used in metallurgy in the smelting of cast iron, steel, bronze, silumin, etc. (as a deoxidizer and modifier, and also as an alloying component).
On Earth - oxygen, in space - hydrogen
The Universe contains the most hydrogen (74% by mass). It has been preserved since the Big Bang. Only a small part of the hydrogen managed to turn into heavier elements in stars. On Earth, the most abundant element is oxygen (46–47%). Most of it is bound in the form of oxides, primarily silicon oxide (SiO 2). Earth's oxygen and silicon originated in massive stars that existed before the birth of the Sun. At the end of their lives, these stars exploded in supernovae and ejected the elements they formed into space. Of course, the explosion products contained a lot of hydrogen and helium, as well as carbon. However, these elements and their compounds are highly volatile. Near the young Sun, they evaporated and were blown out by radiation pressure to the outskirts of the Solar System.
Ten Most Common Elements in the Milky Way Galaxy*
* Mass fraction per million.
What is the most abundant substance in the Universe? Let's approach this issue logically. It seems to be known that this is hydrogen. Hydrogen H makes up 74% of the mass of matter in the Universe.
Let’s not go into the wilds of the unknown here, we won’t count Dark Matter and Dark Energy, we’ll only talk about ordinary matter, about the usual chemical elements located in (at the moment) 118 cells of the periodic table.
Hydrogen as it is
Atomic hydrogen H 1 is what all stars in galaxies are made of, this is the bulk of our familiar matter, which scientists call baryonic. Baryonic matter consists of ordinary protons, neutrons and electrons and is synonymous with the word substance.
But monatomic hydrogen is not exactly a chemical substance in our native, earthly understanding. This is a chemical element. And by substance we usually mean some kind of chemical compound, i.e. combination of chemical elements. It is clear that the simplest chemical substance is a compound of hydrogen with hydrogen, i.e. ordinary hydrogen gas H 2, which we know and love and with which we fill zeppelin airships, from which they then explode beautifully.
Dihydrogen H2 fills most gas clouds and nebulae in space. When, under the influence of their own gravity, they gather into stars, the rising temperature tears apart chemical bond, turning it into atomic hydrogen H 1, and the ever-increasing temperature removes the electron e- from a hydrogen atom, turning into a hydrogen ion or simply a proton p+ . In stars, all matter is in the form of such ions, which form the fourth state of matter - plasma.
Again, the chemical hydrogen is not a very interesting thing, it is too simple, let's look for something more complex. Compounds made up of different chemical elements.
The next most abundant chemical element in the Universe is helium. He, it is 24% of the total mass in the Universe. In theory, the most common complex chemical there must be a compound of hydrogen and helium, but the trouble is, helium - inert gas. Under ordinary and even not very ordinary conditions, helium will not combine with other substances or with itself. Through cunning tricks it can be forced to enter into chemical reactions, but such compounds are rare and usually do not last long.
This means we need to look for hydrogen compounds with the next most common chemical elements.
They account for only 2% of the mass of the Universe, when 98% is made up of the aforementioned hydrogen and helium.
The third most widely used product is not lithium. Li, as it might seem, looking at the periodic table. The next most abundant element in the universe is oxygen. O, which we all know, love and breathe in the form of a colorless and odorless diatomic gas, O 2. The amount of oxygen in space far outstrips all other elements from the 2% that remained minus hydrogen and helium, in fact half of the remainder, i.e. approximately 1%.
This means that the most common substance in the Universe turns out to be (we derived this postulate logically, but this is also confirmed by experimental observations) the most ordinary water H2O.
There is more water (mostly frozen in the form of ice) in the Universe than anything else. Minus hydrogen and helium, of course.
Everything is made of water, literally everything. Our Solar System also consists of water. Well, in the sense that the Sun, of course, consists mainly of hydrogen and helium, and giant gas planets like Jupiter and Saturn are assembled from them. But all the rest of the matter of the Solar System is not concentrated in rock-like planets with a metal core like Earth or Mars, and not in stone belt asteroids. The bulk of the Solar System is in the icy debris left over from its formation; comets, most of the asteroids of the second belt (Kuiper belt) and the Oort cloud, located even further, are made of ice.
For example, the famous former planet Pluto (now dwarf planet Pluto) consists of 4/5 parts ice.
It is clear that if water is far from the Sun or any star, it freezes and turns into ice. And if too close, it evaporates, becoming water vapor, which is carried away by the solar wind (a stream of charged particles emitted by the Sun) to distant regions of the star system, where it freezes and again turns into ice.
But around any star (I repeat, around any star!) there is a zone where this water (which, again, is the most common substance in the Universe) is in the liquid phase of water itself.
The habitable zone around a star, surrounded by zones that are too hot and too cold.
There is a hell of a lot of liquid water in the Universe. Around any of the 100 billion stars in our Milky Way galaxy there are zones called Habitability Zone, in which liquid water exists, if there are planets there, and they should be there, if not at every star, then at every third, or even every tenth.
I'll say more. Ice can melt not only from the light of a star. In our Solar System there are a lot of satellite moons orbiting gas giants, where it is too cold from lack of sunlight, but which are affected by powerful tidal forces of the corresponding planets. It has been proven that liquid water exists on Saturn’s moon Enceladus, it is assumed that it exists on Jupiter’s moons Europa and Ganymede, and probably many other places.
Water geysers on Enceladus captured by the Cassini probe
Even on Mars, scientists suggest that liquid water may exist in underground lakes and caverns.
Do you think I’m now going to start talking about the fact that since water is the most common substance in the Universe, that means hello to other life forms, hello to aliens? No, just the opposite. I find it funny when I hear the statements of some overly enthusiastic astrophysicists - “look for water, you will find life.” Or - “there is water on Enceladus/Europa/Ganymede, which means there must probably be life there.” Or - an exoplanet located in the habitable zone was discovered in the Gliese 581 system. There is water there, we urgently equip an expedition in search of life!”
There is a lot of water in the Universe. But life, according to modern scientific data, is still somehow not very good.
The universe hides many secrets in its depths. Since ancient times, people have sought to unravel as many of them as possible, and, despite the fact that this does not always work out, science moves forward by leaps and bounds, allowing us to learn more and more about our origins. So, for example, many will be interested in what is the most common one in the Universe. Most people will immediately think of water, and they will be partly right, because the most common element is hydrogen.
The most abundant element in the Universe
It is extremely rare for people to encounter hydrogen in its pure form. However, in nature it is very often found in association with other elements. For example, when it reacts with oxygen, hydrogen turns into water. And this is far from the only compound that includes this element; it is found everywhere not only on our planet, but also in space.
How did the Earth appear?
Many millions of years ago, hydrogen, without exaggeration, became building material for the entire Universe. After all, after the big bang, which became the first stage of the creation of the world, nothing existed except this element. elementary because it consists of only one atom. Over time, the most abundant element in the universe began to form clouds, which later became stars. And already inside them reactions took place, as a result of which new, more complex elements that gave birth to the planets.
Hydrogen
This element accounts for about 92% of the atoms in the Universe. But it is found not only in stars, interstellar gas, but also in common elements on our planet. Most often it exists in a bound form, and the most common compound is, of course, water.
In addition, hydrogen is part of a number of carbon compounds that form oil and natural gas. 
Conclusion
Despite the fact that it is the most common element throughout the world, surprisingly, it can be dangerous for humans because it sometimes catches fire when it reacts with air. To understand how important a role hydrogen played in the creation of the Universe, it is enough to realize that without it nothing living would have appeared on Earth.
