 |
Nuclear fusion has long been the holy grail of energy
production. It is the process going on inside the sun, but importantly has
created most of the heavier elements in the universe. Image credit:SOHO-EIT
Consortium, ESA, NASA.
|
A Book Review byANDY FLEMING
'If the atoms that make up the
world around us could tell their stories, each and every one of them would sing
a tale to dwarf the greatest epics of literature', Chown proclaims in the
prologue of this book. The work is his attempt to chronicle humankind’s
efforts, commencing with Democritus in Ancient Greece over two millennia ago,
to discover what the smallest constituents of matter are, and from where they
came.
It’s an enthralling,
comprehensive history lesson in the development of astronomy and atomic
physics, encapsulating key moments and discoveries in the search to answer the
question of why 98% of the mass of visible matter in the universe is composed
of hydrogen and helium, and where the remaining two per cent of ‘metals’ came from.
