Homefront USA; Vietnam: A Television History; 111; CBS News Special: 1968 [Part 2 of 2]

All the atoms in the universe heavier than hydrogen and helium are forged by stars. Stars are really interesting they they don't just sit there. They know that because they last so much longer than we do we think they're there permanent stars are the ultimate alchemy. They they turn light elements into heavier ones. They get the energy that they need to glow that way. Star begins its life made out of hydrogen and helium mostly about 70 percent hydrogen 28 percent helium in the case of the sun. In a star's core the temperature and pressure are so high that hydrogen atoms fused together to make helium. Hydrogen fusion releases produce amounts of energy and heat. You have a star. That's the story for 90 percent of the life of a star fusing hydrogen to make helium. Eventually though the star runs out of hydrogen and begins to fuse its stocks of helium. Making yet heavier elements. And so the way it works and it always works this way is that it contracts and it gets

hotter. And if it can find something new to burn whether it's the kitchen sink or coal or whatever it'll burn it. Helium is taken three at a time. To make carbon. You can add one more helium to that carbon and make element number eight oxygen. That's a tremendous step forward. You get carbon and nitrogen and oxygen made in stars. Now this is great because on the board we already have the principal elements of life organic chemistry is the chemistry of carbon. Carbon fuses next and still heavier elements begin to form sulfur argon chlorine potassium calcium scandium and the pace of this gets faster and faster back in the middle silicon is starting to burn at three and a half billion degrees stupendous temperature. It makes it a teeny and but medium Kurumi a manganese Cobalt nickel and iron.

Iran is really the end of the road it's sort of the nuclear turnabout of which you just cannot squeeze anymore it's the end of the game. A star that has relied on fusion has come to the point where it has nothing more to spend. The stars suddenly caught in a disaster there's radiation going out from the outside but deep in the inside there's no more fuel. Iron can't fuel the stellar furnace and so when a star builds up too much iron it dies. Look or collapses it bounces and it begins to move out first slowly and then faster and faster and that sends a very sharp wave back out through the star and now what was falling down is going out the whole thing's blowing up. And you've made a supernova a supernova explosion it can be as bright as four billion stars like the sun the stupendous explosion such outrageous energies overcome the iron barrier. Cooking atoms into all the rest of the elements on the periodic table.

So starting down here you can go copper zinc galley Jermain arsenic zirconium you know do you believe them to see Ronnie Rhodesian terribly Hillary race. I don't as you know France very left to very serious Zebari a president is you know right. That's enough elements.