made in the stars

monte-reading-september-30,-2014

Reading an interesting book called Magic Furnace, which is a history of how scientists discovered where the elements come from (they're made in stars). Here is an amazing piece of data: Hydrogen accounts for about 90% of all the atoms in the entire universe, even though it is rare on earth. Helium is about 8% of all the atoms in the universe. The other 90 naturally occurring elements make up a paltry 2% of all the atoms in the universe! For every 10,000 atoms of hydrogen in the universe there are 975 atoms of helium, 6 atoms of oxygen, and only 1 atom of carbon!

But what really impresses me is that human beings have been able to figure this out.

Monte