Stellar Alchemy

Why do stars glow, and what can their light tell us after travelling across the dark? This book explores those questions through nuclear astrophysics, a field that links the atoms around us to the stars and to people themselves. Astronomers have traced how the chemical elements came into being and changed over time until they formed the materials we see everywhere today. One of the most striking findings concerns the old alchemist's dream of turning base metal into gold, a change that happens routinely in the interiors of massive stars. The author also shows how every person is tied to the remnants of stars that exploded long ago. Written for readers without a scientific background, the book explains nucleosynthesis in stars and the broader chemical evolution of the universe. Its author, Michel Cassé, is an astrophysicist who has written several popular astronomy books in French.