The Complete Chronicles Of Chaos

It is worth contemplating that the atoms in our body were not forged in the furnace of the Big Bang, but were created within collapsing stars. The temperatures and pressures within dying stars triggered the nuclear reactions that cooked the simple hydrogen and helium into more complex atoms. In the final explosion, as the nuclear fusion reached its climax, these atoms were thrown across the universe and eventually became the iron in our blood and the calcium in our bones. In other words, we are literally stardust. Or, for the less romantically inclined, we are merely nuclear waste.

Simon Singh.

Every atom in your body came from a star that exploded. And, the atoms in your left hand probably came from a different star than your right hand. It really is the most poetic thing I know about physics: You are all stardust. You couldn’t be here if stars hadn’t exploded, because the elements – the carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, iron, all the things that matter for evolution and for life – weren’t created at the beginning of time. They were created in the nuclear furnaces of stars, and the only way for them to get into your body is if those stars were kind enough to explode. The stars died so that you could be here today.

Lawrence Krauss.

~ by Kaiser Kobayashi on February 3, 2012.

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