Vijay Shankar Sharma
Vijay Shankar Sharma
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Part II
Big Bang Nucleosynthesis (BBN) treats the observed abundances of hydrogen, helium-4, deuterium, and lithium-7 as frozen relics of the first three minutes, and standard cosmology cites the match between BBN's predictions and observation as one of the model's central confirmations. For lithium-7, that match fails: BBN predicts an abundance of 5.6 times 10 to the minus 10 relative to hydrogen; the observed Spite plateau value in old, metal-poor halo stars is 1.6 times 10 to the minus 10, a factor of 3.5 discrepancy unresolved for more than three decades. BFUT Paper 3 resolves this by deriving the lithium-7 abundance as a present-day dynamic equilibrium, d[Li-7]/dt = R_production minus k_dest times [Li-7] times [p], between ongoing cosmic-ray-spallation production and ongoing stellar destruction, not a frozen primordial value. A quantitative reservoir-plus-envelope calculation using the measured interstellar lithium abundance and standard pre-main-sequence convective envelope processing yields a predicted Spite plateau of 1.0 to 2.0 times 10 to the minus 10, consistent with the observed 1.6 times 10 to the minus 10, with no modification to nuclear reaction rates and no new physics required [P3].
Source papers: Li-7, p, P3