as Stars are using Nuclear Fusion to produce energy, will there theoretically be a time in the future of the universe where helium will take over hydrogens first place as the most common element in the universe?
1 Answer
It is actually probable that this will happen. It's not easy to work out when in the universes' history this will happen, but some scientists (by looking at the ratio of hydrogen/helium in the universe after 13.7 billion years of universal evolution) estimate that helium, by the fusion of hydrogen, will become more abundant than hydrogen in about 1,000 to 1,000,000 times the current age of the universe (in about 10,000,000,000,000 to 10,000,000,000,000,000 years).
Then following similar periods of time, the next most abundant element will be carbon by the fusion of helium, and then similarly oxygen (maybe) by the fusion of carbon and helium and so on.