Astrophysics for People in a Hurry

Saturday Night Live, 39–40
Saturn, 123, 129, 141, 171, 174
Schmidt, Brian, 103, 104
scientific models, 98–99
scintillator, 161
selenium, 127–28
September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, 179
Shakespeare, William, 173
Shoemaker, Carolyn, 177
Shoemaker-Levy 9 (comet), 42
silicon, 121
silver chloride, 150
single-celled organisms, 150
Smoot, George F., 56
soap bubbles, 135
Socorro, N.Mex., 159
sodium, 116, 121–22, 189
sodium chloride, 116–17
solar system, 165–77
solar wind, 174
Soter, Stephen, 197n
sound waves, 88
Soviet Union, 158, 161–62
space-time, 75
spectra, 35, 37–38
spectrometer, 148n, 187–88
spheres, 134–46
spiral galaxies, orbital speed in, 80–81
Sputnik 1, 158
standard candles, 104–5, 106
stars, 54–55, 138, 194, 205
element formation in, 28–29, 115–16, 117–20, 124, 203
extra-galactic, 67–68
iron made in, 124
luminosity of, 40
number of, 202
periodic jiggle of, 183
Roche lobe of, 138–39
runaway, 64
spectra of, 36–37
spectra of red, 123
star sapphires, 123
Star Trek: The Next Generation, 154
street lamps, 121–22, 189
strong nuclear forces, 19, 20–21, 92
subatomic particles, 20, 73–74
sulfuric acid, 191
Sun, 29–30, 35–36, 40, 85, 89, 171–72, 180, 204–5
chemical signatures of, 35–36
energy output of, 87
helium produced in, 118–19
mass lost per second by, 174