Winnipeg Free Press: Matter matters
Astrophysicist connects the dots from science 'up there' to a better life 'down here'
As the Winnipeg Free Press reports:
There is not a day that goes by that Samar Safi-Harb’s mind doesn’t shake free of Earth and rocket to the stars.
Out there, in the vastness beyond all human things, the University of Manitoba astrophysicist finds a laboratory of sorts. She can’t see it with her own eyes and she will never visit. Yet what happens there is where her work begins.
For years, Safi-Harb has studied what happens when stars die, ending their lives in spectacular explosions. In the remnants left behind, she finds the building blocks of all things — even the blood in our veins, the oxygen we breathe.
“By studying these explosions, we can find these heavy elements in space and say, ‘Look, we are made of these things,’” she says, calling from the airport en route to a speaking engagement in Washington, D.C.
