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Wikipedia has a good writeup: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abundance_of_the_chemical_elem...

TL;DR: Stars burn it up.



That table is for the milky way though, not the universe.


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.


This is a common misconception. Intergalactic space is filled with about half of the matter in the universe. See: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warm–hot_intergalactic_mediu...

As to your original point though, there doesn’t appear to be too many elements here apart from ionized hydrogen and hydrogen.


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."




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