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Perplexed comments on 12-year old challenges the Big Bang - Less Wrong Discussion
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Only hydrogen, helium, and traces of lithium were formed in the big bang. All other elements get formed in stars and distributed into space by novas and supernovas and such. Carbon gets formed fairly easily, in fairly ordinary stars, but most elements are only formed in super-novas.
IIRC, normal stars are able to fuse together things up until iron, at which point (for some reason I don't understand) fusion ceases to be able to sufficiently power the star.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_peak has a pretty straightforward explanation for why the usual channels for element production stop at Iron.