The Disappearing Spoon Chapter 4

Chapter 4: Where Atoms Come From: "We Are All Star Stuff"
Summary:
In chapter 4 of the book, Kean mostly discusses about how the elements came to be formed. He first begins by talking about the Big Bang Theory, which gives an explanation as to how the universe started. The Big Bang Theory explains that all matter was bunched up together into a little ball and so then it eventually exploded; therefore, creating the whole universe. Scientists began to doubt the Big Bang Theory because this big bang should have released elements all over the place; however, young stars had only hydrogen and helium, while older stars contain many more elements. He then goes on to elaborate about stars and how they burn up the elements hydrogen and helium until it all fuses into iron. Stars don't fuse elements beyond iron on the periodic table because it will need energy to do so. After burning down to iron, stars implode and explode outward.
Additionally, the other then mentions Jupiter and some things that make it different. For example, in Jupiter, many elements behave differently. Jupiter has giant red eye, which is a hurricane that is wider than three Earths put together. Jupiter is unique because it has been observed that 25% of the helium is missing from the outer atmosphere and 90% of the neon is also missing. Kean then shifts his attention towards Claire Patterson who was able to determine that the Earth's age was 4.55 billion years. Furthermore, Lewis and Walter Alvarez discovered that Earth must have been hit by several meteorites throughout history, which would explain how the dinosaurs might have slowly become extinct.
Reflection:
In this chapter, I learned so much about the stars that I didn't really know about like the differences that existed between the old and young stars. I also found it particularly interesting when Kean talked about how helium and hydrogen are fused until iron. I had always wondered what caused the stars to explode and die, this chapter gave me a better understanding about this. However, there was some parts of the chapter where I got lost and confused like where it was talking about Nemesis. I really liked how Kean ended this chapter by saying that rare minerals at times inspire “scientific genius” and at other times it inspires “greed and rapaciousness”.

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