I am made of the stuff of the stars

Where did I come from? There are a lot of answers to that question, depending on how you interpret it. But one answer invokes wonder and awe in me, every time I think of it. A song by one of my favorite bands that contains the line “I am made of the stuff of the stars and the oceans flow through my veins.”

This is literally true. You ARE made of the stuff of the stars. Let me explain.

The universe began with the Big Bang (more on that later). But the Big Bang only made hydrogen atoms. After an extremely long time, these hydrogen atoms started to come together to form huge clouds. These clouds condensed until the pressure in the middle was so high, the nuclei of the atoms started to fuse together. This is nuclear fusion, and it’s what powers stars. Nuclear fusion is what makes all of the heat and the light from our Sun and from every other star in the universe.

In nuclear fusion, two hydrogen atoms are fused together to make helium. That’s what our Sun is doing. But our Sun is a middle aged star. When a star gets older, at some point it uses up all of the hydrogen it has. So it starts to fuse helium together to form bigger atoms. And when it runs out of helium it fuses those larger atoms together into even larger atoms. This is how all of the elements in the universe, other than hydrogen, were made.

At some point, a star can’t continue. Nuclear fusion can no longer occur. Everything collapses and the pressure builds up until the star explodes in a spectacular nova, spreading all of the atoms throughout the universe. This has already happened to all of that first generation of stars.

Eventually these heavier atoms came together to form rocky planets, like Earth. And on Earth, those atoms came together to form cells, and all of the living things on Earth, including you.

Stars were born, lived and died to create the atoms in you. You are literally a child of the stars. It took a star’s death to make you. You are an amazing, wonderful, miraculous being.

For further reading about how stars and space can create the stuff of life