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The Secret, Magical Life Of Lithium - NOEMA

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One of the oldest, scarcest elements in the universe has given us treatments for mental illness, ovenproof casserole dishes and electric cars. But how much do we really know about lithium? Jacob Baynham is a National Magazine Award-winning writer and a former T. Anthony Pollner Distinguished Professor at the University of Montana School of Journalism. The universe was born small, unimaginably dense and furiously hot. At first, it was all energy contained in a volume of space that exploded in size by a factor of 100 septillion in a fraction of a second. Imagine it as a single cell ballooning to the size of the Milky Way almost instantaneously. Elementary particles like quarks, photons and electrons were smashing into each other with such violence that no other matter could exist. The primordial cosmos was a white-hot smoothie in a blender. One second after the Big Bang, the expanding universe was 10 billion degrees Kelvin. Quarks and gluons had congealed to make the first protons and ne

The Secret, Magical Life Of Lithium One of the oldest, scarcest elements in the universe has given us treatments for mental illness, ovenproof casserole dishes and electric cars. But how much do we really know about lithium? Finn Berenbroek for Noema Magazine Credits Jacob Baynham is a National Magazine Award-winning writer and a former T. Anthony Pollner Distinguished Professor at the University of Montana School of Journalism. Act I: In The (Very) Beginning The universe was born small, unimaginably dense and furiously hot. At first, it was all energy contained in a volume of space that explo

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