THE iron in your blood, the calcium in your bones, the oxygen that fills your lungs each time you take a breath – all were forged in stars that lived and died before the Earth was born. You are stardust made flesh. You were literally made in heaven.
The story of the nuclear processes that built the elements in your body was essentially told in a seminal paper in 1957 by Fred Hoyle, William Fowler, and Geoffrey and Margaret Burbidge. I recounted the story in my book, The Magic Furnace, which science writer Jacob Berkowitz draws on for The Stardust Revolution…
