In all the universe, everything that exists consists of only a handful of different elements - we say that 92 elements "exist in nature," but more elements than that now exist thanks to the efforts of humans and their technologies.
We have come into this century armed with knowledge the likes of which the ancient Greeks could never have imagined - though some came close.
At the turn of the 20th century, science had progressed through the simple knowledge of smelting metals such as copper and iron in pit furnaces dug into the ground with air supplied by leather bellows, to methods such as electroplating and electrolysis - technologies considered new to the world back then, but disputably possibly already known to ancients in Baghdad with the discovery of the "Baghdad Batteries."
The idea of the chemical element - a substance which could not be further refined because its constituent atoms were all the same - had fired the minds of mankind to uncover the great secrets of matter, and the race was on to discover and understand all of the elements known to exist on Earth.
The end goal came in sight when Mendeleev published his theory regarding the periodicity of elements - why certain chemical properties seem to occur in groups of similar elements (for instance the similar explosive behaviour of the metals lithium, sodium and potassium when exposed to water, and the extreme reactiveness of the gases fluorine and chlorine, and the elements bromine and iodine).
Mendeleev proposed an idea, radical at the time; the concept of periodicity.
Every element has specific properties, Mendeleev reasoned, which identify it as a member of a group. But these groups do not exist all clumped together - all the gases here, all the metals here, all the non-metallic solid elements here. No. He proposed that elements exist individually in periods, with similar elements recurring at the same place in a higher period but with dissimilar elements before and after it.
Periods are iterations of these elements, cycling from the first group and proceeding across a scale to the end of the period where an entirely different kind of elements exists, and then the period begins again at the first group with a substance whose properties are the same as the one on the first group in the previous period.
Think of it as like a piano keyboard. The main keys begin at A, then go on to B and through to G, before the next A key. Each octave brings you back to an A, but one octave higher. Thus you would get a low C, middle C and a high C. And so it is with the chemical elements.
Experimentation subsequently confirmed that these periods exist, and that elements do belong to groups which run vertically down as columns, even as the periods themselves form horizontal rows, in what has become one of the most iconic images of science to emerge out of the 20th century: the periodic table of the elements.
Marvellous Technologies and Matter
Science fiction, and to some extent fantasy, has been enriched by the scientific knowledge uncovered by real world research in the 20th century. Before Henri Becquerel's accidental discovery of radioactive decay in 1896, science considered an element to be inviolate and unchanging; an atom of carbon would stay an atom of carbon until the end of time.
The discovery of radioactivity led to other discoveries, most importantly the nature of the atom, comprising a nucleus consisting of protons and neutrons and possessing most of the mass of the atom, with the electrons occupying a probabilistic quantum cloud surrounding that nucleus, each electron possessing a specific quantum energy signature and spin in what is known as the element's electronic configuration.
The last century is a century of massive discoveries, each more astonishing than the last, and each having widespread effects reverberating far beyond the cosy worlds of academia and literature. The discovery of nuclear fission led to the Bomb, which had irreversible social changes in the latter half of the 20th century reaching into the 21st. Cathode ray tubes led to television screens, which when combined with the invention of broadcast radio created another huge social change in that they brought the worlds of the SF authors to life, and gave us SF and fantasy dramas born in, and for, a visual medium which did not exist in the previous century: shows such as Star Trek, Doctor Who and Battlestar Galactica, some of which were less about education and adherence to scientific rigour and more about pure entertainment.
Those changes filtered through slowly into SF as the more enlightened and intelligent authors, led by the lights of Isaac Asimov and Arthur C Clarke, led us through worlds where new forms of matter were created, where our technologies developed to the point where we had wondrous devices such as "sonic screwdrivers" (for which, read "magic wands") and Niven's disintegrators - which at least had some sort of an explanation (his alien devices could create a field where the charge on the electron was temporarily suppressed, suspending the electromagnetic force in a localised area: once the nuclei and electrons were outside the area the EM force would reassert itself causing a discharge of matter in the form of a hurricane of exploding dust).
As SF reflected our reality, we had technologies which could perform the trick that the alchemists of previous centuries had dreamed of - a literal transmutation of lead into gold, through particle beams in a synchrotron. Admittedly, the gold created existed only as a few highly radioactive atoms, but hey ...
The discovery of nuclear fusion, present as the driving power in every star throughout the universe, led to further revelations about the origins of the heavier elements beyond iron - and to the only place where such matter could possibly have come, from nucleosynthesis produced by the inconceivable forces within an exploding supernova.
We are such stuff as dreams are made on, as Shakespeare once put it; but all our dreams are merely the corpse matter of stars.
The discovery of how complex elements were formed through nucleosynthesis led to the singular phrase of Dr Carl Sagan towards the end of the last century, "We are made of star stuff." Human beings, and all the things around us on this planet, are the dust of dead stars.
The discoveries led to changes in our literature, too. Words entered the common parlance of science fiction and ultimately mainstream life, enlivening human dialogue with what became known in later years as "technobabble -" atom, atomic, nucleus, radiation, radioactive, particle, quantum, proton, electron, neutron, antimatter, positron, alpha, beta, gamma and the rest of the Greek alphabet, spin, electronic configuration. More exotic particles led to other terms: quark, gluon, strange matter, strangelet. Cosmological delvings brought terms such as superstring and brane and ideas such as parallel universes, alternate dimensions and possibly universes existing prior to this one, from whose remains this universe has come into being.
Science fiction absorbed the words and terms being thrown about by academics in their literature, embracing this age of discovery and ushering in an expansion of vocabulary not seen since Shakespeare and Dr Johnson: a vocabulary immediately recognisable by people today, even if they don't entirely understand the concepts behind them.
And all of this began with the codification of understanding which led to the knowledge that only 92 elements are needed to make a universe, most of which is only made of one element. Hydrogen. The lightest element; just one proton and one electron.
Think of this when presenting your lover with a diamond engagement ring, or with a plain gold wedding ring. Say to your lover "I offer you the heart of a dead star," and know that you can only imagine yourself saying this because scientists made these discoveries, and science fiction probably brought awareness of this knowledge to your mind.
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