Stardust: Supernovae and Life -- The Cosmic Connection - Hardcover

Gribbin, Dr. John; Gribbin, Mary

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0300084196 ISBN 13: 9780300084191

Publisher: Yale University Press, 2000

Synopsis

We are made of stardust?and so is all life as we know it. All the chemical elements on earth except hydrogen?including the ones in our bodies?have been processed inside stars, scattered across the universe in great stellar explosions, and recycled to become new stars, planets, and parts of us.

In this engrossing book, John and Mary Gribbin relate the developments in twentieth-century astronomy that have led to this shattering realization. They begin their account in the 1920s, when astronomers discovered that the oldest stars are chiefly composed of the primordial elements hydrogen and helium, produced in the birth of the universe in a Big Bang. They then describe the seminal work of the 1950s and 1960s, which unlocked the secret of how elements are ?cooked” by nuclear fusion inside stars. The heart of the story is their discussion of supernovae, only recently understood as great stellar explosions in which the resulting ash is spread far and wide through the cosmos, forming new generations of stars, planets, and people. Focusing on the relationship between the universe and the Earth, the authors eloquently explain how the physical structure of the universe has produced conditions ideal for life.

About this title

About the Author

John Gribbin, visiting fellow in astronomy at the University of Sussex, is the author of many bestselling books of science, including In Search of Schrödinger's Cat: Quantum Physics and Reality, The Search for Superstrings, Symmetry and the Theory of Everything, Almost Everyone's Guide to Science: The Universe, Life and Everything, and The Birth of Time: How Astronomers Measured the Age of the Universe, the last two published by Yale University Press. He is married to Mary Gribbin, also a science writer.

From Booklist

"We are stardust . . . ," harmonized the Woodstock generation in '69, and for the science behind the lyric, the go-to source is naturally John Gribbin, physicist-turned-prolific-science popularizer. He discourses on a question everyone asks: where did the atoms that comprise Earth, the universe, and us come from? Emerging from the history of chemistry, physics, and astronomy, the answer is approached stepwise through subsidiary queries, such as what powers the sun; what the spectra of starlight reveal; and what happens to a star that runs out of gas, the hydrogen kind. With exemplary explication, Gribbin culminates the story with the breakthrough theory of nucleosynthesis, formulated in the late '50s by Fred Hoyle and others. It explained how stars over their life cycles "burned" heavier and heavier elements. That theory has since been capped by an understanding of a supernova's manufacture of the heaviest elements in its titanic explosion and their scattering through space in dust and gas clouds that condense into solar systems. A fine summary of the origin of our elemental constitution. Gilbert Taylor
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Edition details

• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0300084196
• ISBN 13: 9780300084191
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 256