Will Hydrogen ultimately disappear

[ngc6872]

   As novae spew out heavier elements, will there come a time when all of the simplest elements, hydrogen, be converted up the line?

[speach]

Never thought about it before, but logically it must, but I'm not going to hold my breath. Unless there is a process we haven't discovered yet where H is produced from sub-atomic particles, then the whole process of the universe could go on and on.   

[Mr niall]

No most of the hydrogen is just floating around so it won’t get converted into anything. And even if it wasn’t - there’s stars out there that have been burning for the last 12 billion years already, like brown dwarfs and red dwarf that’ll probably keep going for a while yet.

[Alien 13]

Interesting question, our sun and solar system is 2nd/third or whatever generation and is still mostly hydrogen, there is also obviously a mechanism for creating hydrogen from nothing/energy the void otherwise the big bang would have never happened.

Alan

[Mr niall]

17 hours ago, Alien 13 said:

Interesting question, our sun and solar system is 2nd/third or whatever generation and is still mostly hydrogen, there is also obviously a mechanism for creating hydrogen from nothing/energy the void otherwise the big bang would have never happened.

Alan

Doesn't Newtons first law explicitly state that cant happen?

[Desolation4all]

If a remember correctly, some fusion processes and other processes can form hydrogen. Also, all hydrogen being used requires all hydrogen to either fall into stars or to be dense enough to collapse in on itself to form a star, which is not a given.

[saac]

50 minutes ago, Desolation4all said:

If a remember correctly, some fusion processes and other processes can form hydrogen. Also, all hydrogen being used requires all hydrogen to either fall into stars or to be dense enough to collapse in on itself to form a star, which is not a given.

I'm  not sure if this is what you were thinking about but stellar nuclear synthesis of Helium (the proton proton chain reaction) is a stage fusion reaction which, while producing Helium, also produces atomic Hydrogen.  In not 100% sure but I wouldn't have thought that the Hydrogen created here is then liberated but rather takes part in further proton proton chain reactions.

Re the possibility of all the Hydrogen in the universe running out. The abundance of free Hydrogen (not bound up in stars) is such that I can't see how that could happen.  

Proton proton chain reaction

Jim

[Panda Alvin]

Going bythe theory of "big rip", I think that will end everything first by tearing the biggest object, eventually down to the sub atomic particles, before all the stars can use up all available hydrogen in the universe. .

In that scenario hydrogen will cease to exist but I guess everything will too. ?

[andrew s]

45 minutes ago, Panda Alvin said:

Going bythe theory of "big rip", I think that will end everything first by tearing the biggest object, eventually down to the sub atomic particles, before all the stars can use up all available hydrogen in the universe. .

In that scenario hydrogen will cease to exist but I guess everything will too. ?

The current values in the LCDM model indicate there will not be a big rip (i.e. the scale factor will not go to infinity in a finite time). 

No stars convert all their hydrogen to heavier elements so some hydrogen will always exist. 

Regards Andrew 

[robin_astro]

Talking extremely long term (10^31 years), according to some Grand Unified Theories,  protons (Hydrogen nuclei)  may decay into other particles, though currently there is no experimental evidence for this.

[andrew s]

4 hours ago, robin_astro said:

Talking extremely long term (10^31 years), according to some Grand Unified Theories,  protons (Hydrogen nuclei)  may decay into other particles, though currently there is no experimental evidence for this.

Nor is there any evidence for any GUT. It was expected that the LHC would find some of the supersymmetric particles predicted by the supersymmetric theory but none have been found.

Regards Andrew 

[Stub Mandrel]

If you believe in the triumph of entropy and the heat death of the universe it will all ultimately decay into isolated sub-atomic particles with everything else unimaginably far into the future.

[barkis]

I don't think an answer to that question will be possible   before the Solar system becomes just  more space dust and gas  .

[Desolation4all]

20 hours ago, saac said:

I'm  not sure if this is what you were thinking about but stellar nuclear synthesis of Helium (the proton proton chain reaction) is a stage fusion reaction which, while producing Helium, also produces atomic Hydrogen.  In not 100% sure but I wouldn't have thought that the Hydrogen created here is then liberated but rather takes part in further proton proton chain reactions.

Re the possibility of all the Hydrogen in the universe running out. The abundance of free Hydrogen (not bound up in stars) is such that I can't see how that could happen.  

Proton proton chain reaction

Jim

Yes that's the one, was not entirely sure how it ran again...the only astronomy course I had is already a while ago.

[Sunshine]

I think the universe as we know it will reach its heat death before hydrogen runs out, there's a fair bit of it out there not tied up in stars.