this post was submitted on 13 Oct 2025
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To my understanding, elements smaller than iron can produce energy in nuclear fusion reactions (like in stars and such), but bigger elements require a net energy input to make them fuse. Meanwhile, bigger elements eventually decay into smaller ones (though many take an extremely long time). So, given a sufficient not quite eternity of time for everything lighter to get fused together and everything bigger to decay, iron is the midpoint everything ends up as.