Jacob Baynham at Noema:
Scientists generally consider it uncool to anthropomorphize, but as a nonscientist, I can say that if lithium were a friend, it would be the sort of friend who is humble and unassuming and yet also seemingly everywhere all at once doing really fabulous and important things. Lithium, in my imagination, is the envy of the other elements.
“I’m such a fan of lithium,” the astronomer Brian Fields told me over the phone recently. “It’s the third simplest element. And yet it’s always got surprises for us.” Fields teaches astronomy and physics at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. He specializes in a field called galactic chemical evolution, which seeks to explain the origin of elements in the universe. “Lithium has one of the most complex stories,” Fields said. “The oxygen you’re breathing, the carbon in your DNA, the iron in your blood — that came later, out of stars. But lithium comes straight out of the Big Bang.”
more here.
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