Friday, July 15, 2011

We Are Star Dust

Cosmic Dust, Detected in Colossal Quantities


It's so cool to think about how we actually came about. Every atom in our bodies was forged in the furnace of massive stars that went supernova. Every element ever discovered in the universe was created by the heat and pressure of nuclear fusion in the cores of those stars. How grand that life could have arisen, fragile as it is, from such chaos and such unforgiving conditions! I think of how elegant the universe is, how beautiful, and I am comforted to know that i am a part of all of it. The stuff that composes my body is the same stuff composing the stars and galaxies I see when I look out into the universe on a clear night. What an amazing story of life... from the big bang to humans venturing off to understand other alien worlds! This is far more spectacular than any ancient text could have come up with, no matter how creative the authors may have been. We should learn to treasure the time that we have to exist and appreciate all there is to behold in this amazing place. We all have common ancestry to all living things, to the earth, to our solar system, to the universe. We are all one, made of the same stuff. We should be grateful for all that we have and can experience and not get caught up in the little things that divide us...

In the words of the great Neil Degrasse Tyson, "We are literally star dust."


...and this is what star dust "sounds" like...

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