You Are Made of Star Dust!

In ancient Greece, there was a school of thought that said that everything in the world was composed of one or more of four basic elements; fire, water, earth, and air. We've come a long way since then, but the principle taught still holds; however, instead of only four elements, we now know of 118 elements! Most of you will have learned something about the periodic table, whether or not you remember it. The periodic table, first written down by Russian chemist and inventor Dmitri Mendeleev in 1869, organizes elements by their atomic weight, electron configurations, and chemical properties. Now, what does this all have to do with you being made of star dust?

During the formation of the universe some 14 billion years ago, only the lightest of elements actually formed. Helium and hydrogen, mostly, with trace amounts of lithium and beryllium. The incredible amounts of gas and dust floating around clumped closer and closer together, gravity causing them to pile on more and more until they built up enough heat and energy to begin nuclear fusion, fusing hydrogen atoms into helium atoms. This is the beginning stage of life for all stars, and stars in this process are known as "main sequence" stars. Our sun is currently in its main sequence, and will be for a long, long time.

Once a star's core runs out of hydrogen, the main sequence ends, and it becomes a red giant. Red giants are dying stars, converting the helium atoms in their cores to carbon atoms via fusion. The more massive the star, the more stages it can enter and the more elements it can produce through fusion- from oxygen to iron. Heavier elements such as gold or uranium, however, take a little more... oomph.

That's right, I'm talking supernovae. When a star dies, there are a few things that can happen to it. It can burn itself out, use up all its energy, and become a husk of a celestial body known as a brown dwarf... Or it can explode with incredible amounts of energy, expelling neutrons and elements all across the vastness of space. It's this second option that gives us almost all the other elements, and it's these elements that make up everything we know - our entire world, everything on it, even you and me. This computer I'm typing on right now is made up of elements that were, at one point, created at the heart of a dying star. As Britain's Royal Astronomer Sir Martin Rees said, "We are literally the ashes of long dead stars." Every atom in your body right now was made when a star exploded.

Image: Natural History Museum

The universe is thought to be around 14 billion years old. There are over 7 billion billion BILLION atoms in your body (That's a 7 with 27 zeros!)! All those atoms, created at the heart of countless stars, traversed the infinite void of space for unfathomable millennia, all to end up here, as a part of you. As you read this, with your eyes made up of the stuff of stars, I hope you gain a little more appreciation for just how beautiful this universe really is.

-Trace Oglesby

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