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To: Volsi Mimir who wrote (5617)	3/23/2000 8:52:00 AM
From: Volsi Mimir	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 13018

There are only three ways the universe cooked up the atoms that make up everything, and two of those processes continue to this day, Margon said. The first is the big bang, the explosion that started the universe and created all of its hydrogen and most of its helium and lithium. "That happened once and never again," Margon said. "Every hydrogen atom that you drink in a glass of water was manufactured in the big bang 15 billion years ago." The second process - cooking atoms in the multi-million-degree furnaces inside stars - is the most important for humans because it creates another dozen chemical elements, including carbon, nitrogen and oxygen. Carbon is the basis for all life forms on Earth, and nitrogen and oxygen make up the air that we breathe. The stars that produced these atoms were themselves formed from large gas clouds floating in the cosmos. As these older stars burned out, they produced a new vapor containing carbon, nitrogen and oxygen, a vapor that ultimately formed new stars and planets. "The function of the stars is to cook the atoms that we need for life," Margon said. "The carbon in your skin and the oxygen and nitrogen in the air that we breathe were once in the center of a star that's long gone." The third process is the occasional cataclysmic explosion that destroys a star entirely, known as a supernova, which, at the instant of explosion, produces the most complex atoms. There are very few supernovas, but they are the only way to make the atoms to form materials that humans regard as commonplace - nickel, tin, copper, lead and zinc, to name a few. The atoms in the coins jingling in your pocket were created many eons ago when a supernova spewed the elements in a gas that then settled into forming the Earth and sun. In time, the supernova provided jobs for a fair number of ore miners. "How many of us realize," Margon said, "that astronomy is so directly related to everything we see, everything we touch and everything we are?" YOU WERE COOKED IN A STAR Bruce Margon Professor astro.washington.edu researchchannel.com sdss.org If you have a chance to see this short, informative and entertaining lecture, your appetite for astronomy will be whetted......can be seen on UWTV (Pacific NW area), DISH and internet thru the researchchannel site.