Recorded live during a public lecture given May 20, 2013,
as part of the Carnegie Observatories Lecture Series

STARS and the ATOMIC AGE

The course of human history may have unfolded quite differently if not for a small impurity in one of the rarest elements on Earth: uranium.  This is the story of how stardust from ancient supernovae became the key ingredient in the nuclear arms race.

Recorded live during the

Kavli Frontiers of Science Korean-American Symposium

sponsored by the National Academy of Sciences

August 12, 2013, in Irvine, CA.

Dr. Ian Roederer is an astronomer at the University of Michigan.

SYNTHESIS of HEAVY ELEMENTS

in the EARLY UNIVERSE

What is the origin of the atoms around us? 

This is the story of the steady and sometimes spectacular lifecycles

of countless generations of stars that have forged all the elements

on the periodic table from humble beginnings.