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 an element, an atom, not a molecule which is a collection of several atoms. Your body (or your mother’s body) is capable of linking atoms together to make new molecules, but it is not capable of making entirely new atoms. Making a new atom is nuclear physics, linking atoms together in new ways is just chemistry. Making new atoms is possible, but requires way way way more energy than your body is capable of handling, like, millions of times more energy. The only naturally occurring things in the universe that are energetic enough to make entirely new atoms are stars, and even then, some types of atoms are more difficult to make. The only way we know of to make heavier elements like calcium is when a star dies and explodes in a super nova.
To put the difference in energy into perspective, think about nuclear bombs. The biggest nuke ever detonated was the Tsar Bomba. It weighed 27 tons (that’s pretty heavy!). But it exploded with the same amount of force as 50 megatons of TNT. That is to say, a nuclear bomb that weighed just 27 tons exploded with the same amount of energy as *50,000,000 tons of chemical explosive*.
When your body is forming in the womb, your mother is not generating new atoms. She eats something that has calcium in it, then transports that calcium to your body, where it gets put in its proper position and linked up with other atoms. But at no point is she ‘making’ calcium or any other atom. The calcium already existed.
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