as a planet, and the revelation of a heretofore undocumented reservoir of small icy
bodies called the Kuiper belt of comets, to which Pluto belongs. In this regard,
one could argue that Ceres, Pallas, and Pluto slipped into the Periodic Table
under false pretenses.
Unstable weapons-grade plutonium was the active ingredient in the atomic
bomb that the United States exploded over the Japanese city of Nagasaki, just
three days after Hiroshima, bringing a swift end to World War II. Small quantities
of non-weapons-grade radioactive plutonium can be used to power radioisotope
thermoelectric generators (sensibly abbreviated as RTGs) for spacecraft that
travel to the outer solar system, where the intensity of sunlight has diminished
below the level usable by solar panels. One pound of plutonium will generate ten
million kilowatt-hours of heat energy, which is enough to power an incandescent
lightbulb for eleven thousand years, or a human being for just as long if we ran on
nuclear fuel instead of grocery-store food.
So ends our cosmic journey through the Periodic Table of Chemical Elements,
right to the edge of the solar system, and beyond. For reasons I have yet to
understand, many people don’t like chemicals, which might explain the perennial
movement to rid foods of them. Perhaps sesquipedalian chemical names just sound
dangerous. But in that case we should blame the chemists, and not the chemicals
themselves. Personally, I am quite comfortable with chemicals, anywhere in the
universe. My favorite stars, as well as my best friends, are all made of them.
† For old-timers, this layer was formerly known as the Cretaceous-Tertiary (K-T) boundary.
†† Actually, Earth is my favorite planet. Then Saturn.