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Astronomer says We Are All Made of Stardust

23 Feb

All humans, plants, animals and the Earth itself are built from the ashes left behind after the death of stars. We are fashioned from the nuclear waste that remains after massive stellar explosions. You Are Made of Stardust
“Every atom we are made of has an origin that can be traced back to before the solar system was formed,” Prof Sir Martin Rees said to a full house at the Royal Irish Academy in Dublin. “We are literally the ashes of dead stars or the nuclear waste left behind.”
 “The thing we learn from astronomy is we shouldn’t think of a culmination,” he said. “The universe may have an infinite life ahead of it.”

Though the billions of people on Earth may come from different areas, we share a common heritage: we are all made of stardust! From the carbon in our DNA to the calcium in our bones, nearly all of the elements in our bodies were forged in the fiery hearts and death throes of stars. The building blocks for humans, and even our planet, wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for stars. If we could rewind the universe back almost to the very beginning, we would just see a sea of hydrogen, helium, and a tiny bit of lithium.

Prof Sir Martin Rees also suggested that, although very small compared to the rest of the universe, the Earth may be very important in cosmological terms as the place where sentient life originated before being dispersed to other planets.

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We are Orphans of the Universe

25 Jan

The Mysterious Universe

17 Jan

Indeed the Mysterious Universe

Dark Matter and Dark Energy

95% is the percentage of matter and energy in the Universe that is currently unobservable.

Matter and energy are the two basic components of the entire Universe. An enormous challenge for scientists is that most of the matter in the Universe is invisible and the source of most of the energy is not understood.

Modern calculations say dark matter comprises about 26% of the Universe. We don’t yet know what it is, but we are searching for answers.

We have known that the Universe is expanding since the early 20th century. But recent observations of distant supernovae and other observations show that the Universe is not only expanding, but the expansion is accelerating. This astonishing discovery came as a complete surprise because the expansion of the Universe should slow down with time because of the gravitational attraction between galaxies and clusters of galaxies. The unseen repellant force required to explain this observation has been labelled “dark energy,” and current models say it makes up about 69% of the Universe. That leaves only 5% of the Universe that is visible to us.

Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian

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We are Made of Star-Stuff

22 Dec
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We are Always Interacting and Interconnected with the Universe

4 Dec
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The Great Mysterious Source

1 Dec
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‘The World is Very Complicated

22 Nov
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Dynamic Web of Interrelated Events

2 Nov
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We are at Home in the Universe

29 Jul
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Reality is Veiled

25 Jun