I just learned how everything was created ...

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I consider myself a pretty educated person. However, I just now learned that the basic process of creation of matter is:

  1. Stars form when interstellar gas - hydrogen and helium - clumps together and increasingly draws in other hydrogen and helium atoms through the increasing mass of the forming star. Finally the hydrogen atoms get dense enough that they start nuclear fusion, forming helium and …

  2. All other elements other than hydrogen are helium are formed as byproduct of the nuclear reaction in stars.

So basically everything we are and see comes from hydrogen clumping together and forming nuclear reactions. This may be common knowledge, but I never understood it in those terms.

2

“We are stardust.” Joni Mitchell

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4

It should be noted that element creation in ordinary stars tops out at iron. All heavier elements are only produced when stars go supernova.

5

Sagan always said ‘star stuff’. But I heard Joni Mitchell whenefer he said it.

6

Every atom in your body has been through at least two or three stars.

7

I don’t think that can be said with 100% confidence. It seems likely that at least some primordial hydrogen atoms (those created directly from the Big Bang) were floating about when the star which ultimately gave birth to our solar system went supernova. I can’t say what fraction of those might be expected to be found in one’s body, but I’m entirely certain it’s not zero.

8

Both of these ideas fill me with awe.

9

Isn’t this amazing? One of the first classes I took in college was intro to astronomy, and I knew virtually nothing about cosmology until then (and even after, gotta admit I know virtually nothing). I was gobsmacked by this concept.

I had to wonder about the religious implications of it too. I mean, technically, it validates the ideas of reincarnation and life after death–in a sense at least.

I also remember feeling overwhelmed by the bigness of it all at one point. I had to put my textbooks away for a while and rest my brain. It felt too small for the concepts to fit into. Still does in many ways…

10

Yeah, isn’t that neat? Wow.

11

For some reason, this little factoid never impressed me much. It is cool to know how heavier elements were forged, but I’ve always thought the idea that some of the atoms and even molecules in my body used to be part of someone else, something else, maybe even a mastodon or a dinosaur was more fascinating.
Raawrrr.

12

Maybe. How many more stars are my atoms going to go through?

13

Well, they’ll go through the Sun one more time in about 5 billion years.

14

WOW! I can’t wait!

15

So approximately how many atoms in my body once passed through that of…say, Beethoven?

16

Well, actually the sun will go through them.:smiley:

17

Gotta be careful asking those sorts of questions. Next you’re gonna want to know where babies come from, and the answer ain’t pretty.

18

I’ve read (no cite, but in the Dope) where every breath you take has atoms (or molecules or something) of the big J. Harold’s breath in it. How many breaths have I taken in my life?
I must be somewhere where sainthood! (No need to genuflect)
John