Here’s The Unbelievable Thing We’re All Made Up of.

Did you know that we’re all made up of stardust?

Me either, until last night. I’m staying in a hotel as I write this, which you know means either late-night binging of Friends or cheesy Hallmark/Lifetime movies. Last night it was Hallmark.

In this movie, one of the love interests is a guy who suffers from short-term memory loss after a brain aneurysm. Before that, he was basically the next Einstien in the world of cosmology.

It’s from this ridiculous movie that I learned this fact: we’re all just made up of stardust.

It is quite a romantic notion, I’ll give it that.

Of course, I had to research this.

Planetary scientist and stardust expert (That’s really a thing??), Dr. Ashley King says:

“It is totally 100% true: nearly all the elements in the human body were made in a star and many have come through several supernovas.”

We’ve all heard of the Big Bang — the event that most believe created out universe as we know it. Before the Big Bang came very light elements such as hydrogen, helium and lithium.

Stars are formed from a combination of gas coming together and beginning to combust. Inside of those stars, other elements are created in a process known as nucleosynthesis.

After the Big Bang, the stars that formed are thought to be much larger. Like 50 times larger than the sun!

“The bigger the star, the faster they burn their fuel,” Dr. King says.

Those bigger stars burning created the next generation of stars.

Once those larger stars went supernova, they released the elements they created out into the universe and birthed a whole new generation of stars.

According to this article, any element larger than iron has passed through at least ONE supernova.

Dr. King states: ‘So it’s very likely that there are a whole bunch of different stars that have contributed the elements we see in our own solar system, our planet and those found within you.’

Even stars go through evolution.

Stars created stars, created stars, created stars, which created our periodic table of elements, which eventually created us and the world we live in.

Galactic chemical evolution is a term used to describe this phenomenon. A star dies, its elements are released out into the galaxy, more stars are formed, those stars die, release their elements, and the process just keeps on churning.

‘This process has been going on for something like 13 billion years and our solar system is thought to have formed only 4.5 billion years ago.’ Dr. King informs.

We’re really just a speck of stardust in this enormous universe with a history much larger than we have the capability of imagining.

Here’s some things that have been said about our ancestor stardust:

This is a topic that has had lots of conversation, both in and out of the science world. And it’s not surprising why. The idea that we’re made up of those shiny things way up high in the sky? That we wish on everynight? That’s some powerful story-inducing stuff.

Here’s one final quote from Dr. Ashley King, our tour guide through this post.

‘Every element was made in a star and if you combine those elements in different ways you can make species of gas, minerals, and bigger things like asteroids, and from asteroids you can start making planets and then you start to make water and other ingredients required for life and then, eventually, us.’

Carl Sagan — astronomoer, cosmologist, and author — in his books Cosmos, comments on the enormous parts of us that are made of ‘starstuff’.

“The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of starstuff.”

Bill Nye (the science guy) is just as mind-blown as everyone else by this revelation.

“You and I are made of stardust. We are the stuff of exploded stars. We are therefore, at least 1 way that the Universe knows itself. That, to me, is astonishing.”

Moody singer Joni Mitchell says:

“We are stardust, we are golden and we’ve got to get ourselves back to the garden.”

And Vladimir Nabokov, author of the controversial Lolita, kicks us out with my new favorite parting phrase:

“And the rest is rust and stardust.”

Want to know more?

So do I! There’s so much to learn and I’ve barley even scrapped the surface.

If you’re interested, Here’s where I started.

And if chessey Halmark movies are your thing, here’s that movie that brought along this spiral of questions.