Happy International Year of the Periodic Table, everyone! We’re celebrating 150 years since Mendeleev brought some order to the unruly mess of the elements of matter, organising all of the types of atoms into a system sorted by physics and chemistry: rows of increasing number of protons in the nucleus; columns of similar chemical properties due to the orbiting electrons. This week, Emily takes us through the Astronomer’s version of the table, which really only has three bits to it: Hydrogen, which is almost everything; Helium, which is almost everything else; and the rest, which is just called “metals”.

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Syzygy is produced by Dr Chris Stewart and co-hosted by Dr Emily Brunsden from the Department of Physics at the University of York.

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Things we talk about in this episode:

International Year of the Periodic Table: https://www.iypt2019.org
Dmitri Mendeleev: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dmitri_Mendeleev
Farewell, Opportunity. You’ve done so very well! https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=7334
Astronomer’s Periodic Table by Periodic Videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6akrRznGgDc
Stellar nucleosynthesis: https://www.thoughtco.com/stellar-nucleosynthesis-2699311
Big Bang nucleosynthesis: http://www.einstein-online.info/spotlights/BBN.html
Supernova nucleosynthesis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supernova_nucleosynthesis
Neutron star mergers: https://physics.aps.org/articles/v10/114
The elements song, by Tom Lehrer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AcS3NOQnsQM
An updated version, by Helen Arney: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UzvjB5hC2qc