Threshold 3 · New chemical elements
Chemicals Cook Up
Stars forge carbon, oxygen and iron in their cores and scatter them when they die; the periodic table fills in.
The early universe made only hydrogen, helium and a trace of lithium. Everything else, the carbon in your cells, the oxygen you breathe, the iron in your blood, the gold in a ring, was made later, inside stars and in the violent events that end them.
This chapter follows the elements from their forges to the places they were scattered. It reads the periodic table as a history book, asks why carbon in particular is the element of complexity, and follows the new molecules out into the cold clouds between the stars where the ingredients of planets and life collect.
By the end, the universe has a chemistry, and chemistry is what the rest of the story is made of.
Lessons
- 3.1 Where the elements come fromDraft
Stellar nucleosynthesis: how stars build carbon, oxygen and iron.
- 3.2 Making goldPlanned
Supernovae and neutron-star mergers, the violent events that make the heaviest elements.
- 3.3 The periodic table as a history bookPlanned
Every element has an origin story; the periodic table arranged by where each one was made.
- 3.4 Why carbon?Planned
Bonding, chains and rings: why carbon chemistry is the chemistry of complexity.
- 3.5 Molecules in spacePlanned
Dust, ice and organic molecules between the stars.
- 3.6 From quarks to the HiggsDraft
The fundamental particles and the four forces that shape matter.
- 3.7 Are you really made of stardust?Planned
The famous claim, tested element by element.