Most Abundant Elements in the Universe
Key Findings
About This Dataset
Most Abundant Elements in the UniverseThe universe is almost entirely hydrogen (73.97%) and helium (24.02%), which together account for about 98% of all ordinary matter by mass. This overwhelming dominance traces back to Big Bang nucleosynthesis, which produced hydrogen and helium but almost nothing heavier. Every other element on this list, forged later inside stars, is comparatively rare: oxygen ranks third at just 1.04% and carbon fourth at 0.46%. From neon onward the values fall below 0.14%, with iron, nitrogen, silicon, magnesium and sulfur trailing at fractions of a percent. The steep gap between helium and oxygen, a factor of more than twenty, illustrates how scarce the elements of planets and life actually are on a cosmic scale.
Data Insights
Numbers, trends & sources behind this chart
Methodology & source
- Data source
- Abundance of the chemical elements
- Coverage
- 10 entities · 10 observations
- Measure
- Abundance in the Universe (% by mass)
- Last updated
- 7 July 2026
- Compiled by
- The ANYSTAT team, from the source above
- Values are shown as reported by the source. Nothing is rescaled, rebased or converted — the only changes are thousand separators and decimals shown to two places.
- Entities are ranked highest-first on their value.
Data Sources & References
All external sources cited in this dataset
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