Please retire the “we are made of stardust” phrase I am so tired of it
Stars are made of flesh
I change my mind bring back the original phrase
If I remember correctly, elements heavier than iron are only created when a star dies.
This is interesting because 1) it places a lower bound on when life can evolve, and when life is most likely to evolve, assuming any of a number of certain chemical compositions are necessary and 2) it means that a significant portion of the matter around us was forged by the death of a star.
Stars, when they die, can create new elements and I think that’s cool as fuck.
I looked it up, actually it’s like this:
Helium and Hydrogen were created by the Big Bang.
Elements from Helium up to Iron are created by stars through nuclear fusion during their lifetimes (In a process called Stellar Nucleosynthesis)
And elements heavier than iron cannot be created except by Supernova Nucleosynthesis, by the collapse and death of a star, and elements from silicon through iron still are mainly created by Supernova Nucleosynthesis, since stars big enough to create them by fusion in life are pretty rare
The stardust makes you alive! It’s neat.
This! Yes!
Okay, so, this is a thing we actually know a bit about.
While what you’ve brought up is the leading theory, and has been for a good while, there are some inconsistencies – particularly with the far end of the stable elements and the radioactive elements. The amounts produced in Supernova Nucleosynthesis would be far too low to actually account for the amounts seen in the universe.
So, how were they created?
The best theory we have is collisions between neutron stars.
When two neutron stars collide, they produce a supernova with the required energy density to create those ultraheavy elements, which means that not only are you made of stardust, if this theory is correct, you are made of stardust that was released when two of the most violent, extreme objects in the universe collided, possibly billions of years ago, hundreds of millions of lightyears away.
life was born from two stars fucking