Question: Why Does the Lithium Problem exist?

Steven Gardner answered on 20 Jun 2013:

For the first few minutes after the Big Bang, the whole universe was hot and dense enough for hydrogen nuclei to fuse together to make other heavier elements (This is what powers stars, so image the whole universe as one gigantic star!).

We can calculate very accurately how often these fusion events would have occured and so how much of each element there should be. When we compare that to what we see in space now we get a good agreement for all the elements except for lithium. The way the theory is set up it gives the correct ratios for all the other elements but for two isotopes of lithium it is way off. So far no one really knows why that should be, some scientists think it’s no big deal and will just be a minor error somewhere and others think it might be a clue that the big bang theory needs some modifications.