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The Star In You
- "Our planet, our society, and we ourselves are built of star stuff."—Carl Sagan, Cosmos
"Here's an amazing fact for your next cocktail party: Every single atom in your body—the calcium in your bones, the carbon in your genes, the iron in your blood, the gold in your filling—was created in a star billions of years ago. All except atoms of hydrogen and one or two of the next lightest elements.
They were formed even earlier, shortly after the Big Bang began 13.7 billion years ago.
As hard as it might be to believe, every atom in your body, astrophysicists say, originated billions of years ago in a star or in the explosive aftermath of the Big Bang. Here, a close-up of Polaris, the North Star.
EnlargePhoto credit: NASA, ESA, G. Bacon (STScI)
It's true, according to astrophysicists. You and everything around you, every single natural and man-made thing you can see, every rock, tree, butterfly, and building, comprises atoms that originally arose during the Big Bang or, for all but the lightest two or three elements, from millions of burning and exploding stars far back in the history of the universe. You live because stars died; it's that simple.
How is this so? How can you possibly be a walking galaxy of fossil stardust? Well, the story is not a new one, but it bears retelling, if only because its working out was one of the finest achievements of 20th-century astrophysics—and because it's so astonishing."
NOVA | The Star In You