For anyone confused as to why: We (not just people but life on Earth) are mostly made of hydrogen, oxygen, carbon and nitrogen. Nitrogen was something of a bottleneck because it's so much less ubiquitous than the other three, which are three of the four most common elements in the universe.
I meant it in an "elements occurring in the universe" sort of way, but this is a great point too. If we could get at atmospheric nitrogen naturally, there'd be no bottleneck.
It's complicated. Helium does make the list, but lithium doesn't. Carbon and oxygen are higher than you'd expect if you're just going by atomic weight.
I remember from my astrophysics course that Lithium was formed in the aftermath of the Big Bang. I would imagine that interstellar space is full of Hydrogen, Helium and Lithium.
I can imagine that stable nuclei such as carbon or iron would form as a result of stellar fusion but I would be hard pressed to imagine that these outmass the more primordial elements. I would be interested to see references if you have any.
Yeah but all the elemental matter in the universe is like three dust specks floating in a lecture hall. You can ask about the dust specks or the lecture hall interchangeably.
Great point. I almost missed this. It really seems like there should be another separation in the article I linked, between "Universe" and "Milky Way."
