I get that all of the elements that make us are from stars but I just can’t wrap my head around how I am made of star dust… is this just a broader way of looking at the creation of elements in the periodic table or am I literally made of star dust.
Sorry if this was a stupid question!
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Heavier elements like iron, calcium, nitrogen, etc only form in the pressure of a star. They are then flung across the universe when the star goes nova. The only reason there is iron in your blood or calcium in your bones is is because stars created them.
I think its a bit of both, because we aren’t made from star dust directly, it’s because stars have exploded and thrown out all of their matter that has given us a chance to be made… you can think of it like legos… if you built a really big tower but decided you wanted something else you would need to take apart the tower to make that something else. the stars are the towers and we are the something else… hope that makes sense
Basically the “starting” elements of the universe are Hydrogen and Helium, all other elements are basically the result of fusion within stars, when these stars go supernova those heavier elements then get scattered over the nearby area and then form planets and the animals and plants that live on the planet. So until a star went supernova any planets out there were gas giants; solid / rocky planets require element from supernovas. https://youtu.be/w1GlDVt1Mpk
So there’s a number of elements we see on the periodic table, right? And we call them “light” and “heavy” elements which on a very basic level without getting into specifics is basically how simple or complex an element’s atom is. The only way for heavier elements to exist is for them to be formed through nuclear fusion in which lighter elements are fused together under extreme heat and pressure to form new elements. When the universe was in its infancy the only element around was hydrogen, the simplest and lighter element, in gigantic clouds. Now don’t ask me how hydrogen came to be in the first place I don’t know and I’m not entirely sure science has a concrete answer. Well hydrogen is matter, with mass, so those huge spread out clouds had a rough barycenter towards which all that hydrogen started being pulled into due to gravitational force, which is a force all matter inherently exerts in time space. These masses of hydrogen grew not only more massive but hotter as well, because hydrogen being pulled from light years away and is constantly accelerating when it all comes down to the center point it has significant speed. That coupled with its enormous mass which only grows bigger, making the gravitational pull also stronger, created very huge and hot balls of hydrogen, called stars, which are hot enough to kickstart and sustain nuclear fusion. So throughout a star’s life time it is constantly fusing lighter elements into heavier elements, until it basically runs out of fuel and bursts, spreading those elements into space. So this process occurred billions or trillions or who knows how many times and more starts formed from heavier elements and created even heavier elements and spread those out and much in the same manner planets formed, with enough matter coalescing into a single clump but not enough to form a star since all those clumps forming close to each other essentially compete for the available matter close to them, in cosmic terms.
Matter, fundamentally, cannot be destroyed. It can be changed through nuclear fusion, or nuclear fission, the opposite of fusion, in which heavier elements are broken down into lighter elements, but the atoms making up that matter cannot be destroyed. So basically what that means is that for you to exist, with all the elements that make up you, on a planet, with all the elements that make up it, in a solar system, with all the elements that make up it, and so on and so on, those elements, had to, at some point, been formed in the core of a star. Your atoms have existed since the beginning of the universe and gone through who knows how many things and will go on to be something else after you die. So yes technically everything is made from star dust.
Everything (every element) in our bodies can be found throughout the universe, and, and as we don’t exactly know how our planet came into being as the perfect place for the existence of life, but holds the components of every element known to humans, it can only be assumed that we are the product of stardust.
And, I like this theory.
Stars are pressurised ovens, put stuff in (electrons, neutrons protons), bake the shit out of it, then the oven collapses and then explodes spitting out all these juicy tasty heavy elements that then form the lego blocks of our bodies…
The Big Bang allowed for the creation of hydrogen, a small amount of Helium, and a smaller amount of lithium. the remaining naturally formed elements are all the products of stellar activities. Stars are born, they fuse elements together, then they die. some of them die explosively, which releases their accumulated new elements and creates conditions needed for some other elements to form. even more elements are created when 2 stellar corpses collide and explode.
you are stardust. everything you see, touch, taste and eat is formed from elements created long ago in a star. there is no other source elements heavier than lithium, it all comes from stars living and dying for billions of years ago scattering their remains to be used by the next generation of stars. we are literally and figuratively star children, living our lives by the grace of tiny pieces of dead stars.
In the early universe, shortly after the big bang, there was primarily only light gaseous elements like hydrogen atoms. These atoms came together through gravity and eventually ignited the first stars through fusing together. When two hydrogen atoms fuse they turn into helium. When two helium atoms fuse together they become nitrogen. This continues all the way down the periodic table until you get to heavier elements like calcium and iron.
Eventually, these first stars that have been fusing atoms together into heavier and heavier elements go supernova, exploding and spreading these heavier elements accross the universe. This new mix of available elements reformed into planets, rich with the elements necessary to form life.
So the atoms that make up the elements in your body were fused together by the first stars that came into existence when our universe was born.
Part 1
the whole universe used to be filled with quark-gluon plasma, as the universe expanded this cooled and hydrogen plasma was formed. As it cooled and expanded further electrons stuck to this plasma to form hydrogen gas. As it cooled and expanded further, the hydrogen gas started forming clumps due to gravity. As it cooled and expanded further, the clumps expanded away from each other and the clumps got clumpier and clumpier. The clumps got so dense that the hydrogen became helium, lithium… and all the elements in the periodic table up to iron. All of the elements in your body up until iron was made here.
Part 2
Some of these clumps were sooo good at clumping that all the atoms in the middle of the clump got turned into iron and there were no more things left to clump. The inner shells of this clump then race towards the middle of the clump attracted by its gravity and no longer held up by the the energy keeping it up from the previous clumping up until iron. This causes the outer shell to race as well and it bounces off the inner shell on its way down causing a giant explosion. An explosion so violent that it bombards the expelled plasma with a bunch of neutrons and stuff. These neutrons stick to the atoms creating all of the elements in your body heavier than iron.
Part 3
All of this exploded star dust starts clumping…..
Stardust is just fancy poetic way to refer to the particles (ie actual matter) a star emits or produces. You’re just overthinking it a bit.
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