In fact, researchers recently found a giant star holding 3,000 times more lithium than normal 'giants,' they reported in August 2018 in the journal Nature Astronomy. It created a 'tension,' Serpico said, between what the Big Bang data and the observations of stars were telling researchers about lithium's abundance.Īstrophysicists continue to conduct research to find this 'missing' lithium or to explain why it's missing. This 'missing lithium' discovery was first made in the 1980s, said Pasquale Serpico, a cosmologist at the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) and the University of Savoy Mont Blanc in France. However, according to the Big Bang Theory, the universe should hold three times as much lithium as can be accounted for in the oldest stars, an issue called the missing lithium problem. Lithium, as well as the first and second lightest chemical elements (hydrogen and helium, respectively), are the only elements created at the birth of the universe, according to NASA.

The findings, which would need to be replicated in humans, suggest the element silences certain neurons in the brain and may have a calming effect, the researchers reported in 2016 in the journal Current Biology. Essentially, the worms stopped avoiding harmful bacteria without that protein. In a study with worms, biologists at MIT found that lithium inhibits a key protein in the worms' brain, making neurons linked to an avoidance behavior go dormant. It also appears to plump up brain volume, according to a 2011 study in the journal Biological Psychiatry (though this research is hotly contested). In 2008, for example, researchers reported in the journal Cell that lithium interrupts the activity of a receptor for the neurotransmitter dopamine. Studies show multiple effects on the nervous system. No one knows exactly how lithium works to stabilize mood. Today, lithium carbonate is the compound most often sold as a pharmaceutical. Those salts have the power to change the brain: Lithium salts were the first drugs approved by the Food and Drug Administration to treat mania and depression, according to the National Institute of Mental Health. Lithium makes up a mere 0.0007 percent of the Earth's crust, according to the Jefferson Lab, and it's only found locked up in minerals and salts. The combo of Li and H2O forms lithium hydroxide and hydrogen, which typically bursts into red flame. Like its fellow alkali metal, sodium, lithium reacts with water in showy form. It's also solid at a wide range of temperatures, with one of the lowest melting points of all metals and a high boiling point. It's light and soft - so soft that it can be cut with a kitchen knife and so low in density that it floats on water.

Most common isotopes: Li-7 (92.41 percent natural abundance), Li-6 (7.59 percent natural abundance).

Number of isotopes (atoms of the same element with a different number of neutrons): 10 2 stable.

Boiling point: 2448 degrees Fahrenheit (1342 degrees Celsius).

Melting point: 356.9 degrees Fahrenheit (180.5 degrees Celsius).

Density: 0.534 grams per cubic centimeter.Atomic weight (average mass of the atom): 6.941.Atomic symbol (on the Periodic Table of Elements): Li.Atomic number (number of protons in the nucleus): 3.

Li atomic number