# "We are made of star stuff" - surely not all the particles?

**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-are-made-of-star-stuff-surely-not-all-the-particles/824556
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [November 15, 2018, 1:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-are-made-of-star-stuff-surely-not-all-the-particles/824556 "2018-11-15T13:27:26Z")
**Posts on this page:** 1
**Page:** 2

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### Author: ![dtilque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)
#### Post date: [November 17, 2018, 7:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-are-made-of-star-stuff-surely-not-all-the-particles/824556/21 "2018-11-17T19:40:15Z")

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> [@Reindeer\_Flotilla](#):
>
> Here’s a nice chart from the [Astronomy Picture of the Day](https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap160125.html) site; it’s the periodic table color-coded to indicate each element’s origin. Also from the site is this explanation:

That version is actually out of date. Wikipedia has a better version: [Nucleosynthesis periodic table](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Nucleosynthesis_periodic_table.svg). But note that even that doesn’t cover every possible way nuclides are generated. One well known case is carbon-14, used in radiocarbon dating. That is made by cosmic rays, but it’s such a small fraction of the total carbon around that it doesn’t get on the table.

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