Atheist Memes

The assumption is that the only way lead can exist is via a series of radioactive decay. It is a way. It is generally created in stars by a much more direct process, not through radioactive decay.

Stellar element synthesis is where most elements, iron and below, form. Hydrogen, the most common element, fuses to Helium, Lithium. There are more cycles to stars burning elements, Carbon-Nitrogren-Oxygen Cycle, and a bunch of other stuff, all the way up to Iron. After Iron, nuclear fusion can no longer sustain the star, and it collapses into a neutron star (or any other intermediary ranging from hypothetical quark stars to black holes).

On collapse, you get a supernova. Supernova and other high energy events (called Gamma Ray Bursts, usually attributed to Supernova anyway) explode in a shower of neutrinos and gamma rays. These neutrinos rarely interact with matter since they have no charge, but they still contain a lot of energy, traveling near the speed of light. Gamma rays are the highest energy photons. Anything either particle interacts with will change it.

The collision of the gamma rays burst and nuetrinos with interstellar matter creates the remainder of the elements, much in a similar way we do on earth to create the synthetic elements (like plutonium).

Any isotope can be created this way. Isotopes that are unstable then decay until they become something stable - Uranium -> Lead.

The universe is so old that enough of these elements were able to gather by gravity, forming the relatively tiny deposits we can find on our planet.

If you want a layman approach then this Youtube video about where gold comes from is pretty good. You can skip most of the first half about the culture of gold. The second half of the video is the creation part.

If you want a technical approach then you want to talk about Rapid Neutron Capture and GRB. You'll find that kind of talk here. Warning: When you start digging deep into scientific explanations you discover that there's more we don't know. As the article ends with the idea that our current working theory of r-process doesn't happen often enough to explain how much gold we have so there's likely at least one other way gold is created in the universe. Welcome to cutting edge science!

I am not claiming to be a professional particle physicist, and I don't have my high school chemistry textbooks memorized so I can't quote the exact page where Rapid Neutron Capture creates heavier elements that doesn't go immediately to radioactive elements first.