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by slow_typist 54 days ago
How can it include oxygen?
2 comments

Stars kinda famously fuse elements up to iron as part of normal operations. And even if you exclude that, the entire solar system is leftovers from a previous star - all that is inside our current star too. Sure, much of it isn't at the surface, but there's not much of a reason to expect that literally zero of it randomly floats up among the lighter elements.

Have a reference tho: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_wind

That said, "heavy ions and atomic nuclei of elements such as carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, neon, magnesium, silicon, sulfur, and iron" makes up only "trace amounts" of the solar-wind plasma [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_wind

> our current star

Looking forward to seeing the next one!

We first need to get rid of the current one in a few billion years. That won't end well for Earth, though.
Earth is just part of the same recycling collection plan, it's fine.
Stars make it, our sun is made of it, it’s the third most abundant element.

Distant third

Somehwat surprised to see there are twice more Oxygen atoms than Carbon.
Carbon + helium fusion is rather favorable, vs carbon production by the triple alpha process (3He), so it's just reaction kinetics essentially.