Upper School Intersession 2025

Our Universe is 15 billion years old. In its early phases, it consisted of mainly hydrogen and helium, with only a small admixture of lithium. Yet today, when we look at our hand, we find it consists mainly of carbon and oxygen, a bit of hydrogen and nitrogen, plus some calcium present mainly in our bones. Those elements are crucial to the formation of life, but how and where did they form? In this lecture, presented on an introductory level, Dr. Madejski will talk about the history of elements and how they got dispersed into interstellar space via stellar explosions.