"We're made of stars"; science Jellies, could you explain this in layman's terms?
Asked by
Jude (
32207)
November 16th, 2009
My girlfriend (a geologist and someone who is fascinated with the cosmos) brought this up the other day.
‘Splain, Lucy..
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9 Answers
Essentially everything heavier than Hydrogen and Helium, including the stuff we’re made out of, was produced inside stars. So everything that forms us was once inside a star at some point in time.
@Ivan: specifically, produced by stars going supernova.
If you look around you right now, everything you see was created in the heart of a star, likely several. Not a star like our sun, but bigger, much bigger. Our star the sun, can only make helium; which is made of the hydrogen it consists of. The previous stars were so big that the pressure and the heat could break down and combine atoms into heavier elements than helium. Stars that size, burn out very fast and go supernova, spreading out their inner contents. This is what we and everything around is made of. The stuff of the hearts of long gone stars.
@Ria777
Mostly, yes, but elements heavier than Helium can be produced inside of large stars near the end of their life cycle, before any potential supernova.
We can trace ourselves (as well as everything else) to one instantaneous moment outside of time.
it’s all been kinda downhill since then
What’s she’s trying to say, friend, is, we have star power. So we can shoot bolts of helium and flares of oxygen from our hands.
It’s truE.
I can’t yet do that, but I was able to activate my star power on Guitar Hero earlier. It made the buttons turn blue and the guitar vibrated.
The basic idea is that the “heavy” elements that are required to compose our bodies are formed when stars explode, or go supernova.
(So basically, we are made of bits of stars that went out with a bang!)
“People they come together
People they fall apart
No one can stop us now
‘Cause we are all made of stars”
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