Origin of the Elements of Life

Human beings are, by nature, curious about their beginnings. Often, such questions of "how we came to be" are confined to the origins of modern society, or the development of human beings as a species. In this lecture, Professor Timothy Beers will endeavour to take the discussion all the way back to the VERY beginning, to the origin of the primary elements required to construct life as we know it -- carbon (C), nitrogen (N), and oxygen (O).Over the past few decades, astronomers and physicists have outlined plausible pathways for the astrophysical production of these elements (and others), from the explosive burning associated with massive stars and the slower contributions of lower-mass stars like the Sun over the history of the Universe. Professor Beers explains how the chemical signatures which can be read in the spectra of stars that are still shining today have provided the clues needed to reconstruct this remarkable story, and how future observations (many of which involve the work of Australian astronomers) will be used to fill out the rich detail of this map of creation.