The Magic Furnace
The Search for the Origins of Atoms
by Marcus Chown · first published 1999
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2015–2018first – last mentioned
100% recommend
The historic search for atoms and their stellar origins is truly one of the greatest detective stories of science. In effect, it offers two epics the birth of atoms in the Big Bang and the evolution of stars and how they work. Neither could be told without the other, for the stars contain the key to unlocking the secret of atoms, and the atoms the solution to the secret of the stars.
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…on the subject, and as "Luc" says in the other comment right now in this subthread, he doesn't oversimplify the science. If you like that, for more of the same without a lot of fluff I'm finding The Magic Furnace by Marcus Chown to be wonderful, it's is a history of the elements. How we deduced the very existence of atoms thousands of years ago, then generally much more recently their nature, then how they came…
on “Ask HN: Books with a high signal to noise ratio?” ↗The Magic Furnace is a great book about the history of how we came to understand atoms and where they come from. It shows a lot of the missteps and twisty turns along the way. I also love learning about how scientific…
on “The popular creation story of astronomy is wrong” ↗