Exactly. I believe the elements did not evolve from each other, they were created by a force. I am still a bit fuzzy about how one gets stars out of the Big Bang. What is the speculation on that?
"Exactly. I believe the elements did not evolve from each other, they were created by a force."
Yes and we know quite well how that happens. Its called Nucleosynthesis. A supernova explodes.
"
A star's energy comes from the combining of light
elements into heavier elements in a process known as
fusion, or "nuclear burning". It is generally believed that most of the elements in the universe heavier than helium are created, or synthesized, in stars when lighter
nuclei fuse to make heavier nuclei. The process is called
nucleosynthesis.
Nucleosynthesis requires a high-speed collision, which can only be achieved with very high temperature. The minimum temperature required for the fusion of hydrogen is 5 million degrees. Elements with more protons in their nuclei require still higher temperatures.
For instance, fusing carbon requires a temperature of about one billion degrees! Most of the heavy elements, from oxygen up through iron, are thought to be produced in stars that contain at least ten times as much matter as our Sun.
Our Sun is currently burning, or fusing, hydrogen to helium. This is the process that occurs during most of a star's lifetime. After the hydrogen in the star's core is exhausted, the star can burn helium to form progressively heavier elements, carbon and oxygen and so on, until iron and nickel are formed. Up to this point the process releases energy. The formation of elements heavier than iron and nickel requires the input of energy.
Supernova explosions result when the cores of massive stars have exhausted their fuel supplies and burned everything into iron and nickel. The nuclei with mass heavier than nickel are thought to be formed during these explosions."
NASA's Cosmicopia - Basics - Composition - Nucleosynthesis
Every atom in your body was made from star dust. All the iron in your body for example was made in Big stars exploding, billions of years ago. In fact the solar system itself is recycled material.
"I am still a bit fuzzy about how one gets stars out of the Big Bang. What is the speculation on that?"
It isn't speculation, right after the bang there was only protons and neutrons.
"It was so hot, that all the matter would have been in the form of particles, called protons and neutrons. There would initially have been equal numbers of protons and neutrons. However, as the universe expanded, it would have cooled. About a minute after the Big Bang, the temperature would have fallen to about a billion degrees, about a hundred times the temperature in the Sun. At this temperature, the neutrons will start to decay into more protons. If this had been all that happened, all the matter in the universe would have ended up as the simplest element, hydrogen, whose nucleus consists of a single proton. However, some of the neutrons collided with protons, and stuck together to form the next simplest element, helium, whose nucleus consists of two protons and two neutrons. But no heavier elements, like carbon or oxygen, would have been formed in the early universe. It is difficult to imagine that one could build a living system, out of just hydrogen and helium, and anyway the early universe was still far too hot for atoms to combine into molecules.
The universe would have continued to expand, and cool. But some regions would have had slightly higher densities than others. The gravitational attraction of the extra matter in those regions, would slow down their expansion, and eventually stop it. Instead, they would collapse to form galaxies and stars, starting from about two billion years after the Big Bang. Some of the early stars would have been more massive than our Sun. They would have been hotter than the Sun, and would have burnt the original hydrogen and helium, into heavier elements, such as carbon, oxygen, and iron. This could have taken only a few hundred million years. After that, some of the stars would have exploded as supernovas, and scattered the heavy elements back into space, to form the raw material for later generations of stars."
Life in the Universe - Stephen Hawking
This is a stellar nursery.
The gas clouds which are extremely big and gravity form stars. A supernova went off behind this gas cloud and that will wipe out this cloud someday.
