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Chemical Formula

|< < Prev #3200 (January 28, 2026)

Title text: Some of the atoms in the molecule are very weakly bound.

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Explanation

This is incomplete: This page was created by the carbon in the universe . Don't remove this notice too soon. If you can fix this issue, edit the page!

The supposed "chemical formula for the universe" merely lists the numbers of atoms of each element. As is common practice for real compounds that contain organic structures or substructures, the numbers of atoms of carbon and hydrogen are listed before all of the others; the others are listed in alphabetical order. There are estimated to be 10⁸⁰ atoms of hydrogen (H), by far the most common element in the universe. The next most common element, helium (He), is a long way to the right in the list, and out of view, but would be about a third as many as the hydrogens.

These numbers are large, but they are not nameless. Using the short scale, these numbers can be described as:

• C_10⁷⁶ - Ten quattuorvigintillion carbon atoms
• H_10⁸⁰ - One hundred quinvigintillion hydrogen atoms
• Ac_10⁶⁷ - Ten unvigintillion actinium atoms
• Ag_10⁶⁹ - One duovigintillion silver atoms
• Al_10⁷⁵ - One quattuorvigintillion aluminium atoms
• Am_10²⁶ - One hundred septillion americium atoms
• Ar_10⁷⁵ - One quattuorvigintillion argon atoms
• As_10⁷⁰ - Ten duovigintillion arsenic atoms
• At_10⁴⁷ - One hundred quattuordecillion astatine atoms
• Au_10⁶⁹ - One duovigintillion gold atoms
• B_10⁷¹ - One hundred duovigintillion boron atoms
• Ba_10⁷⁰ - Ten duovigintillion barium atoms
• Be - An unknown quantity of beryllium atoms

The matter originally created in the Big Bang was unbound protons and neutrons. In the first few minutes, some of these combined to form lightweight nuclei, but most remained as protons, i.e. the nuclei of hydrogen atoms. Other, more complex atoms formed later as a result of stellar nucleosynthesis, up to atomic mass 56. Still more massive nuclei have been formed via supernova nucleosynthesis. Although the proportions of these atoms depend in a complex way on the fusion processes involved, and on the stabilities of those nuclei, the most massive atoms are generally both less favored to form and short-lived, so their elemental abundances in the universe are very small. As shown above, the number of americium (Am) atoms is much smaller than those of any other element in the visible part of the "formula". There are slightly fewer atoms of americium in the entire universe than the total number of atoms of hydrogen and oxygen in 1.0 L of liquid water.

This may be poking some fun at the relative usefulness (or rather, uselessness) of chemical formulas for large organic molecules. While it is a useful concept for teaching people about chemistry and balancing equations, and it was useful in the early days of chemistry to try to categorize and learn about molecules via stoichiometry - it does not give much useful information. For example even the simple formula C11H15NO2 has 302 registered isomers. Many of them are NOT good to eat.

Transcript

This is one of 40 incomplete transcripts: Don't remove this notice too soon. If you can fix this issue, edit the page!

[A long panel with a chemical formula trailing off the right side]

C_10⁷⁶ H_10⁸⁰ Ac_10⁶⁷ Ag_10⁶⁹ Al_10⁷⁵ Am_10²⁶ Ar_10⁷⁵ As_10⁷⁰ At_10⁴⁷ Au_10⁶⁹ B_10⁷¹ Ba_10⁷⁰ Be

[Caption below the panel:] The approximate chemical formula for the universe

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Discussion

Make changes, try things out, or just have fun with the wiki here! Just leave everything above the line alone, please.

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This is a test. PoolloverNathan^{[stalk the blue seas]} 20:48, 16 March 2021 (UTC)

This is not. —While False (museum | talk | contributions | logs | rights | printable version | page information | what links there | related changes | Google search | current time: 23:00) 18:38, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

A foreign student asked me to help fight against his math teacher. That was unusual. He was in that class for just a couple of weeks. The teacher's phone number was sent to me. The student asked me to spam-call the teacher. 172.71.155.55 22:58, 18 September 2023 (UTC)

here i'm just messing around in html, ignore this

^furhhfghure _{guyrburgryhuyvfr} "rvhru"

interesting way of writing quotations xd

hmmm this one of putting "<p>" in a line break will come in handy for when i want it to start at the same place than the first line

Please beware that <p> on mediawiki also disables automatic paragraph breaks, so you need a closing </p> or you'll break automatic paragraph formatting for the rest of the page. Zmatt (talk) 22:06, 31 July 2024 (UTC)

edit: da hek did that "</div>" come from An user who has no account yet (talk) 14:14, 13 October 2023 (UTC)

hi uh its hard to get here. is this a reference to undocumented feature??? hmm... this is interesting.
108.162.241.216 02:05, 23 November 2023 (UTC)

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yum yum [citation needed]

Hiuiedeixgeyceiyedhcdiedcve {{trout}}

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<a href=" [AT THE JULY 28TH MEETING][tab] "Cancel the meeting! Our cover is blown.">

More testing: hello ​ does​this​work (yes​it​does) This isn't a good name (talk) 22:44, 28 January 2026 (UTC)
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