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Astronomers’ Universe

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Steve Miller

The Chemical Cosmos

A Guided Tour

Steve Miller

Department of Science and Technology Studies

University College London

Gower Street, WC1E 6BT London, UK

[email protected]

ISBN 978-1-4419-8443-2 e-ISBN 978-1-4419-8444-9

DOI 10.1007/978-1-4419-8444-9

Springer New York Dordrecht Heidelberg London

Library of Congress Control Number: 2011937447

© Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2012

All rights reserved. This work may not be translated or copied in whole or in part without

the written permission of the publisher (Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, 233

Spring Street, New York, NY 10013, USA), except for brief excerpts in connection with

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The use in this publication of trade names, trademarks, service marks, and similar terms,

even if they are not identified as such, is not to be taken as an expression of opinion as to

whether or not they are subject to proprietary rights.

Printed on acid-free paper

Springer is part of Springer Science+Business Media (www.springer.com)

For Vanessa

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vii

Acknowledgements

This book was largely written whilst I was on sabbatical leave

from University College London (UCL) in 2009 at the Institute for

Astronomy (IfA) in Hilo, Hawaii. So I would like to thank my Dean

at UCL, Professor Richard Catlow, and Professor Alan Tokunaga,

Director of the NASA Infrared Telescope Facility and my host at

the IfA. Professor Bob Joseph, also of the IfA, introduced me to

Hawaii and infrared astronomical observing, and shared much of

his great enthusiasm for both with me. Over my 25 years at UCL,

it has been an enormous pleasure to work with some great friends

and colleagues in both the Department of Physics and Astronomy

and the Department of Science and Technology Studies, and their

support and encouragement in my various enterprises is much

appreciated. Professor David Williams (UCL), Dr Tom Stallard

(University of Leicester) and Dr Declan Fahy (American Univer￾sity, Washington) all read various versions of the book, and their

insightful and helpful comments have improved it enormously.

(The faults remain mine, however.) I would like to thank the edi￾torial team at Springer – Jessica Fricchione and Harry Blom – for

their advice and patience. Above all, this book has been inspired

by the work of Professor Jonathan Tennyson (UCL) and Professor

Takeshi Oka (University of Chicago). Long may it continue.

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Contents

Acknowledgements ................................................................... vii

1. Purple Haze: Introducing Our Guide ................................. 1

2. The Early Universe: The Source of Chemistry –

and of Our Guide ................................................................ 9

3. Shooting the Rapids: The Life and Death

of the Earliest Stars ............................................................. 25

4. Heading Downstream and Cooking by Starlight .............. 63

5. Fishing for Molecules ......................................................... 91

6. Branching Out: In the Land of the Giants

and Dwarves ....................................................................... 115

7. In the Delta: Exoplanets – Worlds, but Not

as We Know Them ............................................................. 153

8. Towards the Sea of Life ...................................................... 171

Epilogue ..................................................................................... 191

Annotated References and Further Reading to Chapters ........ 195

Some Useful Numbers .............................................................. 221

Pictures and Figures .................................................................. 223

Index .......................................................................................... 227

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Prologue

In the beginning, there was Hydrogen. And not a lot else. Okay,

there was some Helium, Lithium and a heavy form of Hydrogen

called Deuterium. But there was none of the Carbon, Oxygen,

Nitrogen, Sulfur, Phosphorus, Calcium, Sodium, etc. that are vital

to our very existence. But here we are, and today we know of 110

chemical elements forming literally billions of chemical com￾pounds. Some of these compounds are sufficiently ingenious that

they can replicate by themselves; some of them are sufficiently

sociable that they team up to form living creatures – algae, bacte￾ria and – eventually – life-forms such as ourselves. So how do we

get from Hydrogen (plus a few friends) to where we are now? The

answer is provided by astronomy, the study of the heavens bright

and dark.

Astronomy is a journey: it is a journey over enormous dis￾tances to other worlds, other stars and other galaxies. It is also a

journey back in time. Light takes time to cross the vast distances

of empty space. So astronomers are always looking at other worlds,

stars or galaxies as they were when the light by which we see them

first left home to reach us. In this book, we shall take a chemical

journey, following the flow of the Chemical Cosmos from its

source in the early universe all the way down to the sea of life. So

vast is the journey that we will need a guide, one with an adven￾turous spirit, one prepared to endure many hardships, and one that

will pop up when we most need it, but least expect it. Our guide

will be of simple but ubiquitous parentage. It will be both stable

and energetic; it will have been there since the beginning of the

Chemical Cosmos, and it will be there at its end.

Some time before the end of the decade, or thereabouts, if

enough money can be found, a huge space telescope will blast

off from a launch site in French Guyana. The James Webb Space

Telescope will be ten times as powerful as the current Hubble

Space Telescope. It will examine the sky in the infrared part of the

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spectrum – wavelengths longer than visible red light, responsible

both for heating and for cooling the universe. What it will probe

is the Chemical Cosmos, the river of astronomical chemistry that

has its source in the early universe and takes us all the way to the

sea of life. Much of what the James Webb Space Telescope finds

will be due, directly or indirectly, to our guide along this river

journey. Our guide needs an introduction.

S. Miller, The Chemical Cosmos: A Guided Tour,

Astronomers’ Universe, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4419-8444-9_1,

© Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2012

1. Purple Haze: Introducing

Our Guide

Outside of Chicago’s City Hall is a giant Picasso sculpture of a

weeping woman. For the more artistically challenged, it takes

quite a while before you can “see” it, before you can really make

out what Picasso was getting at and how he got there. Five miles

to the south of City Hall, in the basement of the University of Chi￾cago’s Chemistry Department, lies a piece of glassware of which

the great artist would have been proud.

Again to the uninitiated, it takes quite a while to “see” it. It

looks like a deranged spider; indeed, those who work with it call

it the Tarantula. When it is working in the darkened laboratory

in which it sits, it is suffused by a purple haze and resonates to

an electric hum. The Tarantula is not a work of art in the con￾ventional sense, although it is certainly a tribute to the art of the

glassblower who made it. This artistic glassware is a discharge

tube, a device for making electrically charged chemicals that are

normally only found high up in the atmosphere or in the depths

of outer space.

We will be returning to the Tarantula shortly.

The Tarantula’s owner is Takeshi (just call me) Oka, (now

Emeritus) Professor of Chemistry and Astronomy, graduate of the

University of Tokyo, distinguished member of the British and the

Canadian Royal Societies, holder of many other distinctions from a

scientific career that now spans six decades (Figure 1.1). In Chicago,

Oka runs the “Oka Ion Factory”, a laboratory that has paved the

way in the study of chemicals that are called “molecular ions”.

Ions derive their name from the Greek ion, meaning “moving

thing,” and they were given this name by Michael Faraday, Pro￾fessor of Chemistry at the Royal Institution in London between

the years of 1833 and his death in 1867. Ions, explained Faraday,

are what move in a chemical solution, or – in a more modern

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The Chemical Cosmos

application – a fluorescent light tube, when you run an electric

current through it. Opposites attract – cations are positively

charged, and travel towards the negatively charged cathode.

Conversely anions are negatively charged and head for the – you

guessed it – positively charged anode.

The smallest element of negative charge is called the elec￾tron, the first sub-atomic particle ever discovered in 1897 by the

British physicist Joseph John (J.J.) Thomson (Figure 1.2). Atoms are

made up of electrons surrounding a nucleus, positively charged

protons and electrically neutral neutrons. Atoms may become

positively charged by dumping a negatively charged electron; and

they then become cations like the Sodium atom in common table

salt. Or atoms may become negatively charged by picking up an

electron and then become anions like the Chlorine atom in the

same salt crystal.

Molecules are groups of atoms more or less tightly held

together, like Water. In Water, two Hydrogen atoms combine with

one Oxygen atom to form the Water molecule. Molecular ions are

electrically charged molecules that have either been careless with

their electrons – molecular cations – or greedy for them – molecular

Figure 1.1 Takeshi Oka at work in his laboratory at the University of

Chicago: credit – Oka Ion Factory, University of Chicago.

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