Many of us homo sapiens live our lives of quiet desperation, drowning in the glare of high pressure sodium lights and cringing under the influences of our hectic, high pressure modern environments. In most cities on this planet, only a rare star can be glimpsed at night by those few individuals who occasionally raise their gazes from the traffic signal just ahead to scan the heavens, however briefly. Questions about the origin, evolution, and eventual death of the Universe don't often find themselves on the agendas of most people.

Living in the western United States as we do, the existence of the Universe around us is considerably more obvious. On a clear summer evening with the marvelous dark skies available up in the Foxpark, Wyoming area, even a casual observer is captivated by viewing the magnificent swaths of star clouds in the Milky Way, as well as the myriad of stars, planets, and fuzzy nebulae shining shyly and discreetly in the vault of the sky. Although this impressive spectacle has changed but little in the past thousand years, our understanding of just what it is that we are viewing has undergone substantial changes.

Following the invention of the telescope in 1648 and its subsequent application to what hitherto had been "naked-eye" observational astronomy, remarkable advances were made in planetary and solar observations. These advances were due in part because of the proximity of the Sun and planets to the Earth, so that even with the relatively feeble magnifications (10x to 33x) provided by the first telescopes, hitherto unknown features, such as sunspots, planetary rings, and lunar craters, became visible for the first time to the human eye. These discoveries were generally not welcomed by contemporary ecclesiastical authorities, and selected observers were tortured and/or killed for their efforts.

The recognition that the Sun is a star similar to many of those feeble points of light in the nighttime sky was a significant breakthrough in our understanding of the Universe. Despite its crucial importance in providing our planet with the only source of heat and light available to us to sustain our lives, most homo sapiens simply take the Sun for granted and rarely wonder about its remarkable power and influence on our lives. During the 19^th Century, a variety of ideas arose regarding the mysterious power source possessed by the Sun and the stars, but none of these ideas even came close to identifying the true mechanism which produces these prodigious stellar powers. This stellar enigma puzzled the greatest human minds and helped keep the mysterious stars in the realm of the occult.

Training even a large, modern telescope on a star yielded much less information than was obtained, for example, when the Moon was examined with such an instrument. One basically saw just a brighter star! Even huge increases in magnification and telescope aperture yielded little more than a better view of the spurious disk attributable to Fraunhofer diffraction. As it turned out, the stars are so far away that their actual disks can not be examined directly with a telescope. On the other hand, systematic examinations of the many types of nebulae were somewhat more fruitful because at least these objects were sufficiently extended that magnification made them appear larger to our curious eyes.

The invention of the spectroscope in 1861 and its subsequent application to astronomy opened up completely different research options because spectroscopy allowed scientists to identify the presence of certain chemical elements in the stars and nebulae by measuring the characteristic wavelengths emitted (and absorbed). Even the early application of the spectroscope revealed some surprises, such as the discovery of helium in the solar atmosphere, an element which, at that time, was unknown to Earth-bound scientists. Using the Doppler-shift, it was also possible to learn that some objects are rotating rapidly and many are receding from us at fantastic speeds allowing us to realize that we are in an expanding Universe!

The large, long focal length refractors built during the latter part of the 19^th Century permitted the distances between us and the nearest stars to be measured with some accuracy using simple geometry and the diameter of the Earth's solar orbit as a baseline. The results were startling: The nearest stars are located trillions of kilometers away from the Earth, a result which could have been calculated from the apparent brightness ratios of the Sun and stars, if a radiographic method had been used to make the measurements. The classical Universe had gotten very much bigger in a very short length of time!

Despite the early suggestions of Sir William Hershel, the vast majority of people familiar with nebulae believed that they all were simply clouds of interstellar dust and gas, clouds which weren't much further away from us than the stars around them. Early efforts to photograph nebulae yielded results consistent with the old belief that nebula were simple clouds of dust and gas. This was true because of the low resolutions and poor sensitivities of the photographic plates.

Technology, however, was marching along. Following the First World War, fine-grained blue sensitive, photographic emulsions became available for astronomical use. When plates exploiting these new emulsions were used to photograph some of the so-called "spiral nebulae," such as M-81, an astonishing discovery was made: These spiral nebulae were not objects consisting of dust and gas, but were composed of immense numbers of stars. Furthermore, it soon became obvious that these "spiral nebulae" were not nearby, close objects, but were located at far greater distances from the Earth than previously realized. The stars often seen in the same field of view as one of the "spiral nebulae" were actually comparatively close by, rather like drops of rain on your windshield when you're looking at a distant object like the Grand Canyon. The concept of a "galaxy" or "island universe" had just been born! The human concept of the Universe had just gotten about a million times larger in diameter than it had been only a few years earlier.

In these initial photographs, only the brightest stars in the arms of these "spiral nebulae" were resolved--the dense, central cores of the nebulae remained a featureless glow. Radiographic measurements revealed that stars in the arms of "spiral galaxies" were bluish whereas those in the central regions were predominantly redder in color. It was only until after World War II that red sensitive, fine-grained photographic emulsions became available for astronomical use. With these emulsions, the central cores of the "spiral nebulae" could be resolved into myriads of individual stars.

The spectroscope revealed that, in addition to color variances, there were significant chemical differences in the blue stars occupying the arms, compared with the red stars located in the central regions of the spiral nebulae. Spectroscopic analyses of the blue stars revealed the presence of many heavy elements, whereas the red stars were remarkably free of elements heavier than helium. The blue stars were more massive, much hotter, and therefore much more luminous than their redder cousins. It was also calculated that the blue stars must have relatively short lifetimes compared to their reddish cousins. The output power of a hot object, such as a star, is proportional to its surface area multiplied by the fourth power of its surface temperature. Thus, a star with a surface temperature of 10,000 degrees K will radiate sixteen times as much power as a similarly sized star with a surface temperature of 5,000 degrees K.

Another mystery was the fact that the presence of elements heavier than helium was detected in these hot, blue stars. Somehow, the creation of these heavier elements from lighter elements might be associated with processes that were only carried out in hot, blue stars. This proved to be a very difficult problem to solve, particularly in view of the fact that we didn't know what mechanisms or processes were involved in the average star being able to produce incredible amounts of reliable radiative power over time durations of billions of years. The Sun, for example, steadily radiates more than 10^26 watts of power, day in, day out.

Application of the spectroscope to analyzing the solar spectrum revealed that the vast majority of the Sun's mass is composed of the element hydrogen, followed by a smaller amount of helium. Small quantities of other elements were also found, including iron. Spectroscopic examination of the light coming to us from nearby stars revealed similar compositions for them, with most of these stars being composed almost entirely of the lightest element, hydrogen.

These discoveries regarding chemical abundances among the Sun and stars seemed rather confusing if one were to imagine that the Sun and our planet, the Earth, had similar origins. As we stand on the Earth's hard surface looking up at the stars, we have discovered that the core of the Earth is composed mainly of iron. The Earth's mantle evidently is composed of other heavy elements, including oxygen, calcium, silicon, magnesium, etc. The only free hydrogen on this planet is confined to an insignificant wisp at the outer reaches of the atmosphere. Analysis of the chemical composition of the Moon reveals that it is rather similar to the Earth, and not at all like that of the Sun and stars. Even the air we breathe seems to have little to do with the chemical abundances on the Sun--1% of the Earth's atmosphere is Argon 40, whereas the only significant argon isotope on the Sun is Argon 38. On the Sun, the abundances of nitrogen and neon are approximately equal. On the Earth, the ratio of nitrogen to neon is a million to one! The chemical compositions of our bodies also differ drastically from the abundances measured in the Sun and stars. Rather than believing that the Sun may have had a common origin with us, we wonder if it simply had a parallel origin.

After a careful examination of the sky, it was realized that the Sun (and the Solar System) are physically located in one of the arms of an average-sized spiral galaxy, an object which we have been calling the "Milky Way" for some time now. Although the Sun is a rather conservative, "ordinary" star, it is not a hot, blue, luminous star typical of those bright stars found in the arms of a spiral galaxy. There are, however, stars nearby which are much bluer, brighter and therefore hotter than the Sun.

The continuing evolution of science and the military confrontations of various nations in World War II spurred research into the true origin of stellar power plants. With the demonstration of the first nuclear chain reaction in Germany before World War II, several nations began to devote significant resources to performing secret research on what was euphemistically (and incorrectly) referred to as "atomic energy." The United States started the "Manhattan Project" which culminated in the construction of three weapons which exploited the sudden release of energy by splitting (i. e., fission) the nuclei of unstable, heavy atoms to form smaller, lighter nuclei. These weapons worked by bombarding the uranium nuclei with slow neutrons thereby triggering nuclear fission.

Top secret work on a much more powerful weapon was begun. This work culminated with the development of a device called the "hydrogen bomb," or "H-bomb." The "H-bomb" was designed to fuse hydrogen into helium with the concomitant release of an enormous amount of energy. This process required generating extremely high temperatures--hundreds of millions of degrees Kelvin--in order for the short-range nuclear force to overcome the weaker, but long range repulsive Coulomb electrical force. As it turned out, the fusion process used in this weapon was, in fact, the same fundamental process which powers most of the stars in the sky, including our old friend, the Sun. Remarkable progress has been made in building experimental research facilities for studying the properties of thermonuclear fusion. Currently, the National Ignition Facility (NIF) is nearing completion at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, California. The NIF should be in operation within the next two years.

With the recognition that thermonuclear fusion is the fundamental source of power for the Sun and stars to perform their miraculous roles as celestial beacons and, if planets were also on hand, facilitators of life in the Universe, we have been able to realize that big, hot, blue stars can, in fact, synthesize elements heavier than hydrogen. It turns out that big, hot, blue stars can synthesize increasingly heavier elements up to and including iron, while reaping smaller incremental energy benefits. Synthesizing elements heavier than iron, however, actually requires the net input of energy, so that it quickly became evident that once a large star has converted a large fraction of its hydrogen into heavier elements, the life of the massive star will soon come to an end once its fusion fuel supply is exhausted. Both calculations and observations show that this end is sudden and violent.

A small star, such as the Sun, has a mass sufficiently large that if the star ever fails to produce the requisite amount of power normally furnished by thermonuclear fusion--this requisite power keeps the star inflated like a child's balloon--then gravity will cause the star to collapse down from a diameter of around a million kilometers to something of the order of 10,000 kilometers, approximately the diameter of the Earth. The resulting collapsed object, called a "white dwarf" is but a tiny fraction of its former self. The density of such a white dwarf is enormous, approximately a million times greater than its previous density as a main sequence star, which is around a gram per cubic centimeter so that the white dwarf has a density of approximately a million grams per cubic centimeter. Essentially no fusion process occur within this dying star. The white dwarf quietly fade away, eventually becoming a "red dwarf" or even a "brown dwarf" as it gradually cools. Because of their smaller surface areas, white dwarves typically put out less than 0.01% of the light they formerly did. Given the relatively small mass of the Sun, this white dwarf death will evidently be the fate of our Sun.

Such a gentle fate doesn't await a more massive, hot, blue star. After the fusion fuel runs out so that the output power of the star fails to keep it inflated as a low-density sphere having an average density of several g/cm^3, the hot massive star begins to collapse. The synthesized elements from helium to iron are stratified within the star and located in onion-like layers. As described by Silk(1), starting at the surface of an old blue star with twenty solar masses is a 4.5 solar mass helium layer, followed by a 2 solar mass carbon layer, a 9 solar mass oxygen layer, a 1.7 solar mass neon layer, a 0.5 solar mass magnesium layer, a 0.9 solar mass mixture of silicon and iron, followed by a 1.5 solar mass iron core. Since the collapse produces an enormous increase in temperature and pressure within the star, the lighter elements located in the outer layers can permit further exothermal fusion processes to accelerate. At temperatures between 100 and 200 million degrees Kelvin, the so-called triple alpha particle reaction can occur in which three helium nuclei combine to form carbon 12 and the release of a 7.3 MeV gamma ray, which is only about 1/10 the energy released in fusing a comparable mass of hydrogen into helium. The rate of power output of this reaction depends upon the 30^th power of the temperature, so that if the temperature increased by a factor of two, the fusion power would increase by a factor of approximately one billion or 10^9.

By comparison, the simple proton-proton fusion chain reaction takes place at temperatures of around 10 million degrees K and depends upon only the fourth power of the temperature. This is the principal process used by the Sun to generate its heat and light. For more massive stars operating at higher temperatures of around 30 million degrees K, some higher level hydrogen-consuming fusion processes produce power which strongly depend upon the temperature. The carbon-nitrogen fusion process, for example, depends upon the 15^th power of the temperature; i. e., if the temperature of the star increases by a factor of two, the output power would increase by a factor of approximately 33,000. It is clear that a star that has moved on from the simple proton-proton power generation scheme to the carbon-nitrogen reaction could start exhibiting some dangerous oscillations in output power given minor perturbations.

The sudden increase in internal temperature precipitated by a partial collapse of an old, hot, blue star can produce such a startling increase in the output power of the star that the resulting power surge causes the onion-like outer layers of the star to explosively blow off, exposing the incredibly hot interior layers, and creating what is described as a "supernova." From a distance, this tremendous power surge would look as if the star had exploded, although the core of the star would initially be unaffected by the collapse of the outer layers. When this star goes supernova, so much energy is released that a variety of endothermic fusion reactions can take place, so that all the really heavy elements from iron to californium can be synthesized quickly in the resulting exploding fireball. The supernova explosion produces so much energy that the dying star briefly produces as much power output as an entire galaxy! Significantly, this cataclysmic denotation hurls these heavy elements out into interstellar space in all directions as "star dust."

Since the three solar mass iron core of the old blue star cannot produce fusion power on its own, and the core will eventually collapse into a strange form of matter in which nearly all the nucleons are neutrons arranged in a lattice comprising what is now called a "neutron star." The diameter of this remarkable sphere would be approximately 10 km. Since energy, mass, angular momentum, and magnetic flux lines are conserved in this stellar cataclysm, an initial magnetic field of 1 gauss (similar to the Earth's field), would become more than a billion gauss on the surface of the neutron star. Conservation of angular momentum would cause the neutron star to spin on its axis hundreds to thousands of times per second. And, with a mass of approximately a million Earths, the gravitational acceleration at the surface would be approximately a trillion times that of the Earth, or around 10^13 m/s^2. The huge magnetic fields, the rapid rotation rate, and the effects of material falling into the gigantic gravitational field of this stellar ember cause fantastic effects to be created, including the generation of powerful radio waves, creation of a pulsar, and radiation of X-rays.

When I first became seriously interested in astronomy, I eagerly learned about the stars and planets in the sky, but I did not fully appreciate the research value of meteorites. As it turns out, some very important clues as to the origin of the Solar System can be gleaned by analyzing meteorites. As described by Joseph Silk(2), when the Allende carbonaceous chondrite fell in Mexico in 1969, it was carefully studied. This study revealed the presence of anomalies in the abundances of certain isotopes within the meteorite. Trace amounts of a rare isotope of magnesium (Mg^26) in aluminium-rich inclusions were found. Mg^26 does not occur naturally on the Earth, but this stable isotope is produced by the radioactive decay of Al^26 through emission of a positron and neutrino in a reaction with a half-life of about a million years. Calculations show that the radioactive Al^26 parent nucleus is synthesized only in the exothermal chain reactions facilitated by the fireball expansion during explosion of a supernova. The startling fact is that the radioactive Al^26 parent nucleus serves as an atomic stopwatch, defining the length of time from the explosion of a nearby supernova to the formation of that meteorite containing the Mg^26 inclusions. Since the Mg^26 deposits are found to be overlapping the Al inclusion in the meteorite, it follows that the stable Mg^26 nuclei were created by the decayed Al^26 parent nuclei.

It has been long assumed that these meteorites were formed at the same time that the Solar System itself was created. However, the physical process of condensation of a large, interstellar hydrogen cloud is an exceptionally slow process. It typically takes a star like the Sun billions of years to condense from a primordial cloud of hydrogen gas. It takes a very long time because clouds of hydrogen exhibit a massive "greenhouse effect" by being opaque to their own radiation. When the density fluctuations in an interstellar hydrogen cloud initiates a partial collapse of the cloud under the influence of its own gravity, conservation of energy requires that the collapsing portions of the cloud will experience an increase in temperature. The increased temperature of the collapsing portion of the hydrogen cloud causes an increase in pressure which, in turn, causes the cloud to expand, thereby thwarting the condensation of the nebula.

The hot hydrogen gas radiates away some of this energy, but this radiated energy is immediately absorbed by nearby hydrogen gas, raising its temperature, and trapping the energy within the primordial cloud. Only gas molecules near the edges of the cloud would be able to radiate their energy into space, thereby effecting a cooling of the nearby hydrogen gas.

If, however, the primordial hydrogen solar nebula were suddenly blasted with tiny metallic grains expelled from a nearby supernova, then the metallic dust embedded in the nebula could absorb radiation coming from the hot hydrogen gas and re-radiate this energy efficiently at longer wavelengths which are not absorbed by the cloud. By radiating the heat of gravitational collapse away into interstellar space, energy is quickly lost by the cloud, and calculations show that the solar nebula could then condense "quickly," within the span of a million years, permitting the proto-Sun to form into a sphere having a density of several grams/cm^3 and commence thermonuclear fusion processes.

As the nebula shrank, angular momentum would be conserved, and the resulting rotating cloud would take the shape of a spinning disk. Within this rotating and flattening disk, much smaller spheres could form further out from the proto-Sun in the rotating nebula, thereby allowing planetesimals to form. It has been theorized that the major planets were formed by accretion from a number of these planetesimals. This plane of this rotating disk of matter is today called the plane of the ecliptic. The injection of a large quantity of heavy elements from the supernova would increase significantly the abundances of these elements in the condensing planets.

The inner five planets (consisting of Mercury, Venus, Moon, Earth, and Mars) were sufficiently close to the proto-Sun that as the Sun went through some brighter stages in which it erratically produced much more power than it does today (ref. 3), it apparently fried the five inner planets, removing most of the lighter elements initially present. The cinders which remained formed what we call today "the terrestrial planets," while the planets further from the Sun which were not fried we refer to as "the giant planets." The terrestrial planets today contain a great deal of iron, nickel, silicon, magnesium, calcium, carbon, and oxygen. These elements were bound together during the Sun's "Tau-Tauri" phase and therefore didn't escape into interstellar space.

Venus, Earth, and Mars apparently have larger iron cores than does Jupiter, and Mercury isn't far behind. If we assume that the quantity of iron remaining in the Earth's core today is approximately the same as it was when the Sun entered its Tau Tauri phase, while making the same assumptions about Jupiter, then that suggests that the Earth would have been the largest planet in the Solar System with a total mass about seven times that of Jupiter. Venus would have been in second place with a total mass of about six Jupiters. Mars would have been in third place with a mass of around 1.2 Jupiters, and the Moon is estimated to have had half the mass of Jupiter before its subsequent collision with the Earth and subsequent loss of 75% of its mantle and core.

The Moon has obviously had a hard life. Originally condensing as the sixth largest planet in the Solar System, it lost more than 99% of its mass when the Sun went through its Tau Tauri stage. The enormous hydrogen and helium atmosphere of the proto-Moon was blown away completely by the proto-Sun. Sufficient time elapsed for the Moon to cool sufficiently to develop a core and mantle.

The elliptical orbit followed by the incinerated Moon around the proto-Sun was subsequently perturbed into allowing a series of near-collisions with the Earth until a catastrophic collision with the Earth allowed most of the Moon's mantle and core to be ripped away by Earth's gravity and fall down on the Earth with the lunar mantle forming the continents and the impacting lunar core fragments sinking to the center of the Earth. At the time it is estimated that the Earth was spinning more rapidly on its axis with the day equal to about 7 hours. During the collision, the precession of the equinoxes was speeded up by the tidal torque of the Moon until its period was also approximately equal to the rotational period of the Earth. In this manner the Moon lost sufficient momentum that it was captured by the Earth into a very close direct orbit (i.e., the lunar orbital angular momentum vector was nearly parallel to the plane of the ecliptic).

Frantically collecting its remaining fragments with its suddenly weakened gravity, the Moon gradually reformed itself into a sphere having only one eighth as much mass, and using its still strong tidal effects on the Earth, gradually transferred the Earth's rotational angular momentum into increased lunar orbital angular momentum, moving steadily outward from the Earth where the Moon may have successively accreted the Earth's six original moons into its battered crust. The pair became a lopsided double planet with the Earth having 80 times the mass of the Moon. Photographs of the far side of the Moon first taken by the Soviet Union showed that the six "astroblems" evidently marking the graves of six large objects which struck the Moon after its recoalesence are located only on one lunar hemisphere, just as impacted insects are only found on the windshield and leading edges of a moving vehicle.

Eventually escaping from the dominance of Earth's gravity by continued use of its clever tidal torque trick, the Moon today revolves around the Sun as the ninth largest planet in the Solar System, occupying either the third or fourth slot from the Sun, depending upon the time of the month. The force of the Sun on the Moon averages a factor of 2.3 times that of the Earth on the Moon, so the orbit of the Moon around the Sun is strongly perturbed by the gravitational pull of the Earth. And, as a consequence of the trials and travails of the Moon, it now has roughly eight times the angular momentum possessed by the Earth in the Earth-Moon system. These lunar torques on the Earth have had a beneficial effect: the generation of a strong, 1 gauss terrestrial magnetic field.

For us here on the Earth, we find that our planet also was fried by the proto-Sun and, even worse, dethroned from being the largest planet in the Solar System. Although in the Sun, nitrogen and neon are approximately equally abundant, on the Earth nitrogen is more abundant by a factor of a million. Why? On the Earth the principal form of argon is argon 40, comprising 1% of the atmosphere. For the Sun, Ar^38 is the preferred form. Why? It turns out both of these questions have easy answers. All of the Earth's atmosphere was completely blown away, much as the Moon and Mercury are today. Nitrogen in the Earth's atmosphere comes from decomposition of crustal rocks by volcanoes. Since neon is a noble gas, it doesn't form chemical compounds, and it could not be bound in the crustal rocks before the Sun blew away the early atmosphere. Argon 40 is the stable decay product of radioactive potassium 40 which was bound in the rocks before the Sun blew away the original atmosphere. Today the Earth is content to be the fifth largest planet in the Solar System with the Moon occupying ninth place.

Life as we know it would probably not exist on the Earth were it not for the Sun going through its Tau-Tauri stage and blowing away the gigantic hydrogen and helium atmosphere. Since our twin-planet Venus does not have a magnetic field, it seems that the all-important magnetic field which keeps away evil radiation from the Sun from striking the Earth's surface is due to the differential tidal torques on the Earth's mantle and crust exerted by our battered planetary buddy, the Moon. Thus, life as we know it wouldn't be the same if it weren't for the Moon's tidal and gravitational effects on our planet.

What this means to us, as inhabitants of the third (or fourth) planet from the Sun, is that it is possible that all of us are here because of the generosity of a nearby supernova which injected the primordial solar nebula with massive quantities of its star dust. If this generous supernova had not been in the right place at the right time about five billion years ago, the proto-Sun might just now be condensing in a largely hydrogen primordial cloud. Without the heavy elements it spewed into the original solar nebula, the planets might have consisted of low-Z ices, and the evolution of carbon-based life forms such as ourselves would have been quite unlikely. Where is our stellar benefactor today? Where is Big Daddy? Is he a feeble neutron star wandering through the nearby spacetime continuum? Your mission, as intrepid amateur astronomers, is to find our dear former supernova, aka Big Daddy, as he ekes out his existence, probably now existing quietly as a nearby neutron star. He, unlike our cousin the Sun, was most likely our stellar parent.

In any case, it is a startling realization for us that the elements present in our bodies right now--elements vital for life to exist--must have been produced within the incredible thermonuclear furnaces of at least several large stars. These stars evolved, long ago lived their lives, and subsequently exploded in violent, thermonuclear denotations which injected their precious cargoes of carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus, gold, silver, lead, iron, platinum, etc., into the nearby interstellar medium. That means that when you look up at the nighttime sky and view these brilliant, blue, celestial beacons, your connection with these stars is intimate -- for you are made of stardust!

1. The Big Bang, W. H. Freeman and Company, San Francisco (1980), Joseph Silk, author, p. 269
2. Ibid., p. 271.
3. Stars, Their Birth, Life, and Death, W. H. Freeman and Company, San Francisco (1978), Josif S. Shklovskii, author, translated by Richard B. Rodman, p. 96.

About the author

Gary Linford has been an amateur astronomer since he was a Boy Scout when he bought his first telescope -- a non-achromatic refractor -- from an ad in Boy's Life. Subsequently he built his own 105 mm clock-driven equatorial refractor from various odd parts, including drapery hangers and an old water heater. In high school, he wrote an essay describing his construction of the telescope for the Westinghouse Science Talent Search and won an Honorable Mention -- one of two in Utah. (Kip Thorne -- the noted gravitational physicist -- was one of the other Honorable Mentions in Utah.)

He then attended MIT where he earned a BS degree in physics. He did his thesis under Nobel Laureate, Charles Townes, on the newly invented laser. Subsequently, he constructed a 155 mm f/15 refractor which he principally uses for planetary observations. Using some of the data obtained from his constructing a series of very long lasers (ranging in length from 10 meters to 30 km), he completed his Ph.D. in physics at the University of Utah.

He was briefly the Director of the new University of Utah Observatory and worked for a short time on an Apollo 17 search for lunar water before NASA canceled the program. He then returned to Hughes Aircraft Company shortly before going to work at the laser fusion program at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. This led to two laser fusion research appointments in Germany, one at the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics and the other at the Max Planck Institute for Quantum Optics. When President Reagan gave his "Star Wars" speech, TRW called him in Germany to offer him a part in their Strategic Defense Initiative programs. He returned to the USA, and he participated in the development of some new high power laser nonlinear optics devices at TRW for the SDI. He also acquired a portable, 20 cm aperture Celestron catadioptric telescope.

Subsequently, he managed a new laser fusion program for the DoE which developed two inertial confinement fusion drivers for the Prometheus Fusion Test Reactor. Presently he and his wife operate their scientific consulting business, Pfeifer Science Associates, in Laramie. PfSA has recently acquired a computer-controlled, 35 cm aperture Celestron fork-mounted telescope for which they plan to construct an observatory building in Laramie.