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