Submission + - Element Creation 101: Big Bangs and Supernovas
An anonymous reader writes: It's an unwritten law that every popularizer of astronomy or physics inevitably publicly states that humans are made of stardust. This idea is mentioned so consistently that it has unfortunately become cliché. But the great minds who have talked about this (Carl Sagan, Stephen Hawking, Martin Rees, etc.) aren't suffering from a lack of creativity. Rather, they realize that the story of nucleosynthesis (element creation) is one of the most profound and beautiful tales science can tell, and immediately connects the events at the beginning of time, or within the hearts of stars, to each person's every-day, Earth-bound existence.
Coordinating with two leaders in nucleosynthesis research, Gary Steigman at Ohio State University and Bradley S. Meyer at Clemson University, Seed magazine has condensed the story of the elements into an illustrated poster to give a glimpse of the grandeur behind one of science's most-repeated statements.