Astronomy
The Role of Lithium in Early Universe Nucleosynthesis
Quick fact
Big Bang nucleosynthesis predicts that about one atom in every ten billion produced in the first minutes of the universe should be lithium-7, yet observations of ancient stars show only about one-third that amount—a discrepancy known as the 'cosmological lithium problem.'
Why this is interesting
You've probably heard that the Big Bang created hydrogen and helium. But did you know it also forged lithium—and that there's nearly three times less of it in the oldest stars than physics predicts?