The origin of that mud and fuel is the place the starstuff idea comes into play. A lot of that Photo voltaic System-forming materials was hydrogen and helium, which have each been round for the reason that earliest days of the Universe. However ample heavier components — carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, iron, and so forth — first got here into being a few hundred million years after the Massive Bang, when clouds of hydrogen and helium collapsed into the first stars.
Within the cores of stars, intense stress and warmth fuse hydrogen atoms collectively to make helium — the identical course of that powers our Solar in the present day. When hydrogen within the core is used up, some stars start fusing helium into heavier components, like carbon and oxygen. These are the weather that make up most of what we’re. As some stars grow old, they undergo intervals the place they throw off a few of these components off into house in large stellar winds.
When very large stars attain the top of their lives, they explode as supernovae. In these final moments, immense vitality powers the fusion of even heavier components like cobalt and nickel. Because the star explodes, these components are flung out into house. Along with heavy components created by means of different stellar processes, they will finally develop into components for forming a planet, enriching the soil, feeding a plant, and changing into a part of a human.
That is a part of what makes life so fascinating. The precise materials that makes up residing issues is fundamental — simply chemical constructing blocks made by fusing heavier and heavier components. However what life does with these supplies is totally magical.
What Carl Sagan tapped into is the wondrous nature of the truth that components fused in stars can come collectively to type an individual who can then ponder these very stars. We’re starstuff finding out the celebrities — a means for the Universe to know itself.
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