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Meteorites are often studied as part of cosmochemistry. Cosmochemistry (from Ancient Greek κόσμος (kósmos) 'universe' and χημεία (khēmeía) 'chemistry') or chemical cosmology is the study of the chemical composition of matter in the universe and the processes that led to those compositions. [1]
Cosmic Evolution: The Rise of Complexity in Nature (2001) is a book by Harvard astrophysicist Eric Chaisson. [1] It examines cosmic evolution which includes the history of natural evolution from the Big Bang to the present from the perspective of the emerging multi-scientific discipline of Big History . [ 2 ]
Nucleosynthesis in stars and their explosions later produced the variety of elements and isotopes that we have today, in a process called cosmic chemical evolution. The amounts of total mass in elements heavier than hydrogen and helium (called 'metals' by astrophysicists) remains small (few percent), so that the universe still has approximately ...
This results in compositional evolution of cosmic gas in and between stars and galaxies, enriching such gas with heavier elements. Nuclear astrophysics is the science to describe and understand the nuclear and astrophysical processes within such cosmic and galactic chemical evolution, linking it to knowledge from nuclear physics and astrophysics.
Chemical evolution may refer to: Abiogenesis, the transition from nonliving elements to living systems; Astrochemistry, the study of the abundance and reactions of molecules in the universe, and their interaction with radiation; Cosmochemistry, the study of the chemical compositions in the universe and the processes that led to them
As an offshoot of the disciplines of astronomy and chemistry, the history of astrochemistry is founded upon the shared history of the two fields. The development of advanced observational and experimental spectroscopy has allowed for the detection of an ever-increasing array of molecules within solar systems and the surrounding interstellar medium.
The time frame for recombination can be estimated from the time dependence of the temperature of the cosmic microwave background (CMB). [4] The microwave background is a blackbody spectrum representing the photons present at recombination, shifted in energy by the expansion of the universe.
Schematic timeline of the universe, depicting reionization's place in cosmic history. Reionization refers to a change in the intergalactic medium from neutral hydrogen to ions. The neutral hydrogen had been ions at an earlier stage in the history of the universe, thus the conversion back into ions is termed a reionization. The reionization was ...