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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.