Notes from a presentation at Capricon 45, Chicago, Feb. 7, 2024. Any mistakes are mine. The speaker is not responsible for any errors here.

Larry Bartozek will describe the intimate relationship between astronomy and the Periodic Table by looking at how everything we learn about the distant universe comes from dissecting starlight, and starlight comes from excited atoms changing their energy states. Topics will include a brief history of the universe, electron shell structure, spectroscopy on starlight and more! All of this comes from an understanding of the unique “fingerprints” of atoms in the light they give off. Larry will also show the work that he did on the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Telescope.

• CMB started out as gamma radiation. Now microwave.
• Ages of the uiniverse:
  • Radiation era: ≤ 380,000 years after Big Bang
  • Matter era: From then until about 8.8 billion years after BB
  • Dark Energy era: Where we are now. Expansion not uniform
• Tevatron, now LHC to create conditions at 10^-12 seconds
• Just Six Numbers
• Theo Gray – salt
• Table of radionuclides
• D₂O ice does not float, unlike H₂O ice.
• Electron shell structure: Atomic shells are standing waves.
• Balmer forest. Space expanding at different rates.
• Sloan Digital Sky Survey
• Bubble in the large scale structure of the elements. Acoustic oscillations. Galaxies formed on the bubbles. Voids within them.
• Supernovae are not the source of very heavy elements. Those elements came from merging neutron stars. This is because the very heavy elements have extra neutrons. How the universe creates gold
• The Universe Has A Lithium Problem referring to NON-EXTENSIVE STATISTICS TO THE COSMOLOGICAL LITHIUM PROBLEM
• The pp chain and the CNO cycle.
• Abundance of the chemical elements and Solar System Abundances of the Elements
• Helium flash
• Ned Wright’s Cosmology Tutorial

“You are a ghost driving a meat coated skeleton made from stardust riding a rock floating through space. Fear Nothing.”