Saturday Science Lecture with L. G. Sobotka on The making of chemical elements from the Big Bang to the laboratory

The synthesis of the chemical elements started with the Big Bang and continues today in stars via the normal, exothermic, nuclear burning/fusing of lighter elements into heavier ones and slow neutron-capture reactions. However, many of the elements are made during food fights, I mean mass fights, between two stellar objects and violent implosion/explosion events which eject material into the cosmos. The talk will start with the nuclear science basics required to understand “nucleosynthesis”. With this background, the presentation will proceed to the rather meager contribution of the Big Bang to the making of the elements, what is – and is not - going on in our star, the perverse process by which carbon-12 (the catalyst and seed for much of subsequent synthesis) is made, how free neutrons are generated post big-bang, a discussion – and movies – of the making of elements in violent stellar events, and conclude with the human efforts to make elements likely never produced by mother nature.