How can you trace minerals from supernovas to our teeth and bones? Isn’t the calcium that make up our bones produced during our gestation? How is that connected to a supernova from potentially millions of years ago?
In: Biology
Calcium is a chemical element. Elements are made up of atoms.
We humans are not able to change chemical elements.
As far as our body is concerned calcium is calcium. We don’t make it at all, we don’t change something else into it, and we don’t change it into something else.
It’s just…there and we eat it and then turn it into teeth and bones.
Stars happens to be basically the only place in the universe where elements can change. They do this by smashing atoms together so hard that they combine and when a star goes supernova it smashes a ton of atoms together extra hard. And that tends to be really good at making a lot of the heavier elements.
So billions of years ago a star went supernova and then that debris field eventually formed our planet over billions of years. And us humans are munching on that billions of year old calcium to make out teeth and bones because there’s no way for it to change into something other than calcium.
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