Brian Villmoare, "The Evolution of Everything: The Patterns and Causes of Big History" (Cambridge UP, 2023)
New Books in Anthropology
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The Origins of the Universe
Heavier elements come from supernovas. Large enough stars actually explode and they generate enough force to fuse iron into the heavier elements. Things like gold or tungsten or uranium are rare because only the largest stars that exploded as supernova produced them. There's an interesting process where there's a gravitational force between all things. So if two things pass each other, they're drawn to each other. If they're close enough, they'll start orbiting each other. And then enough of that material gets caught up in that it can form a sphere. That's how the sun was formed and the planets and so forth. It's not an accident that they're all spheres.
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