The Evolution of Matter. From the Big Bang to the Present Day
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Author(s): I. N. Tolstikhin and J. D. Kramers
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521866477
Format: hardback
521pp
Price: £70.00, $140.00
Review Date: 20 August 2008
Review: Here the authors explain how matter in the Universe developed from the primordial production of light elements within minutes of the Big Bang and from subsequent stellar processes that continue to make heavier elements at the expense of lighter ones. It also describes the evolution of interstellar matter and its differentiation during the accretion of the planets and the history of the Earth, with emphasis on an isotopic perspective. Variations in the stable isotope composition of many elements help us to understand the underlying process of differentiation and radioactive isotopes, and their radiogenic daughter isotopes, the isotopes acting as fingerprints of the processes in which they were produced or their ratios modified. This book gives comprehensive descriptions of a variety of isotope systematics and fractionation processes that occur in the Universe.