Book description
'Superb ... Gribbin has done it again ... the story of how the matter
that makes up our bodies travelled from the stars ... a wonderful
account' Sunday Times, Books of the Year
Every one of us is made of stardust, John Gribbin explains in this
dazzling book. Everything we see, touch, breathe and smell, nearly
every molecule in our bodies, is the by-product of stars as they live
and die in spectacular explosions, scattering material across the
universe which is recycled to become part of us.
It is only by understanding how stars are made and how they die that
we can every understand how we came into being. Taking us on an
enthralling journey, John Gribbin shows us the scientific
breakthroughs in the quest for our origins. With the raw materials for
creating life all around us, he concludes, it is impossible to believe
we are alone in the universe.
'An incredible story ... gives a sense of the almost unbelievable
coincidence of physical laws and circumstances that resulted in your
being able to read these words today' Literary Review
'Gribbin skilfully and engagingly traces the historical sequence ...
rather like Sherlock Holmes reading clues' New Scientist
John Gribbin is one of today's greatest writers of popular science
and the author of bestselling books, including
In Search of Schr
dinger's Cat
,
Science: A History
and
Deep Simplicity
. He is famous to his many fans for making complex ideas simple, and
says that his aim in his writing - much of it done with his wife, Mary
Gribbin - is to share with his readers his sense of wonder at the
strangeness of the universe. John Gribbin trained as an astrophysicist
at Cambridge University and is currently Visiting Fellow in Astronomy at
the University of Sussex.
