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Factories for the Universe
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
In this chapter we open the door to our own history. Surely one of the most satisfying discoveries of modern astronomy is how the natural processes of the Universe led to the conditions in which a small planet could condense around an obscure star in an ordinary looking galaxy, and life could evolve on that planet.
In this chapter: we look at the way stars have created the chemical elements out of which the Earth, and our bodies, are formed. The nuclear reactions in generations of stars that burned out before our Sun was formed produced these elements. But the physics is subtle, and nearly does not allow it. We examine this issue, and also show how the study of a by-product of nuclear energy generation in the Sun, neutrinos, has revealed new fundamental physics.
The evolution of life seems to have required many keys, but one of them is that the basic building blocks had to be there: carbon, oxygen, calcium, nitrogen, and all the other elements of living matter. The Universe did not start out with these elements. The Big Bang, which we shall learn more about in Chapter 24 to Chapter 27, gave us only hydrogen and helium, the two lightest elements. All the rest were made by the stars. Every atom of oxygen in our bodies was made in a star.
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