The Magic Furnace: The Search for the Origins of Atoms [Paperback]

If only because of its grand scale, cosmology can bring out the worst in science writers. But The Magic Furnace is as unputdownable as any thriller as it unifies the very big and the very small in a single coherent vision of creation.

In a cosmos dominated by hydrogen and helium all the other elements make up a mere two per cent of the universe's mass. It was not always so. There was a time when those other elements did not even exist. The stuff which we're made from was not fully formed by the Big Bang. So where did it--where did we--come from?

Chown dovetails two histories: the story of how we came to know how stars are born, grow old and die, and the story of how we investigated the atom and came to appreciate how different elements are related. This is no contrived juxtaposition. The elements from which we are made were assembled by stars and distributed by supernovae. We are--literally--stardust.

All scientific histories are simplifications after the event but Chown, in something of the spirit of Local Heroes's Adam Hart-Davis, brings a biographer's eye to those--from Greek philosopher Democritus onwards--who brought us to our present understanding.

By Chown's account, the universe seems uncannily friendly to the formation of organics and ultimately, life. Chown's take on this "anthropomorphic" (and quasi-religious) version of the world is a model of balanced and responsible speculation and provides the fitting conclusion to this fascinating account. --Simon Ings

"A clear introduction to a fascinating area of physics and astronomy. Chown is to be congratulated on a beautifully crafted book." - "New Scientist"
"An eminently readable piece of science history dealing with the quest to discover the nature of matter, recounted with a novelist's eye for character and suspense." - "New Statesman"

"The Magic Furnace keeps readers anxious for the next puzzle piece to fall into place. It reads like a Sherlock Holmes novel."

"The Magic Furnace is the work of a literary alchemist who tranmutes the iron of complexity into the gold of lucidity."

"The strength of The Magic Furnace is in the story. It never gets bogged down in scientific jargon."

"In a series of artfully connected and well-crafted stories, cosmologist Marcus Chown traces humanity's quest to understand the origin of matter."

Every atom in our bodies has an extraordinary history. Our blood, our food, our books, our clothes - everything contains atoms forged in blistering furnaces deep inside stars, which were blown into space by those stars' cataclysmic explosions and deaths. From red giants - stars so enormous they could engulf a million suns - to supernova explosions - the most violent events in the universe - the birth of every atom was marked by cosmic events on an enormous scale, against a backdrop of unimaginable heat and cold, brightness and darkness, space and time. But how did we discover the astonishing truth about our cosmic origins? THE MAGIC FURNACE is Marcus Chown's extraordinary account of how scientists unravelled the mystery of atoms, and helped to explain the dawn of life. It is one of the greatest detective stories in the history of science. In fact, it is two puzzles intertwined, for the stars contain the key to unlocking the secret of atoms, and the atoms the solution to the secret of stars.

Reviews of "The Magic Furnace"
REVIEWS OF "THE MAGIC FURNACE"

"A clear introduction to a fascinating area of physics and astronomy. Chown is to be congratulated on a beautifully crafted book. Like his previous work, Afterglow of Creation, it will surely be a strong candidate for future science book prizes." "New Scientist" (11/12/99)

"Marcus Chown's The Magic Furnace is an eminently readable piece of science history dealing with the quest to discover the nature of matter, recounted with a novelist's eye for character and suspense." "New Statesman" (Books of the Year (29/11/99)) --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Marcus Chown's extraordinary account of how scientists unraveled the mystery of atoms and helped to explain the dawn of life is one of the greatest detective stories in the history of science. In fact, it is two puzzles intertwined: the origin of atoms, and the origin of stars. Neither story 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.

Marcus Chown is New Scientist's cosmology consultant. He is the author of Afterglow of Creation, which was runner-up for the Rhône- Poulenc Science Book Prize, and was the winner of the 1994 Glaxo Wellcome ABSW Science Writers' Award.

PROLOGUE
Stardust into flesh: the cosmic connection
I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journeywork of the stars (Walt Whitman)
Every breath you take contains atoms forged in the blistering furnaces deep inside stars. Every flower you pick contains atoms blasted into space by stellar explosions that blazed brighter than a billion suns. Every book you read contains atoms blown across unimaginable gulfs of space and time by the wind between the stars.
Astronomers often talk glibly of black holes and exploding stars, pulsars, quasars and the titanic eruption of the Big Bang. But if the truth be told it is extremely difficult to believe that any of these things are actually real--as real, for instance, as a mountain or an oak tree or a newborn baby. They are simply too remote, too far removed from the familiar world of our experience. It seems inconceivable that they could have the slightest connection with our everyday lives.

But this is an illusion.
Many of the most dramatic and awe-inspiring of cosmic events--from the violent death throes of stars to the titanic fireball that gave birth to the entire Universe 15 billion years ago--are connected to us directly by way of the atoms that make up our bodies.
If the atoms that make up the world around us could tell their stories, each and every one of them would sing a tale to dwarf the greatest epics of literature. From carbon, baked in bloated red giants--stars so enormous they could swallow a million Suns--to uranium, cooked in supernova explosions--just about the most violent cataclysms in all of Creation. From boron, generated in atom-crunching collisions in the deep-freeze of interstellar space to helium, forged in the hellish first few minutes of the Big Bang itself.
The iron in your blood, the calcium in your bones, the
oxygen that fills your lungs each time you take a breath--all were baked in the fiery ovens deep within stars and blown into space when those stars grew old and perished. Every one of us is a memorial to long-dead stars. Every one of us was quite literally made in heaven.
For thousands of years, astrologers have been telling us that our lives are controlled by the stars. Well, they were right in spirit if not in detail. For science in the 20th century has revealed that we are far more intimately connected to events in the cosmos than anyone ever dared imagine. Each and every one of us is stardust made flesh.
The story of how we discovered the astonishing truth of our cosmic origins--how we found the magic furnace that forged the atoms in our bodies--is one of the great untold stories of science. In fact, it is two stories intertwined: the story of atoms and the story of stars. Neither story can be told without the other. For the stars contain the key to unlocking the secret of atoms and the atoms the solution to the puzzle of stars.
In the 20th century, the story of the quest for the origin of atoms is the story of two great theories and the pendulum that has swung back and forth between them. One theory maintained that atoms were cooked inside stars then ejected into space to provide the raw material for new suns and new planets while the other theory contended that atoms were assembled at the very birth of the Universe in the first blisteringly hot minutes of the Big Bang.
At first the pendulum swung to stars as the most likely site of the elusive magic furnace. Then, when it appeared that stars were simply not hot enough for the job of cooking atoms, the pendulum swung to the Big Bang. When the Big Bang turned out not to be up to the job either, the pendulum swung back to stars again. Or at least most of the way to stars. For nature, as we are so often reminded, is under no obligation to make things simple just for our convenience.
But before we were in any position to discover the cosmic origin of atoms, we first needed to realise that atoms were actually made and not put in the Universe on Day One by the Creator. And before we could realise this truth we needed to realise something even more basic and far-from-obvious: thateverything is made of atoms...