Astronomical

I'm not going to get involved in all the religion stuff that's been going around, but this kind of ties in to my beliefs.

Instead, I'm going to talk about something that is incredibly cool that has nothing to do with bowties and why you should think it's cool too.

SPACE

No, no, but listen to me for a second, will you.

There are these laws called thermodynamics which deal with temperature, heat, and energy.

Basically:

0. Heat flows from hot to cold
1. Conservation of energy: basically, the amount of energy remains constant (not talking about that weird stuff with antimatter).
2. Entropy (disorder/chaos) always increases.
3. It is impossible to reach absolute zero.

So now you're like, "Yawn. I know that and physics is boring."

No! No, no, no. Stay with me!

Concerning Law One: Matter cannot be created nor destroyed. Granted, antimatter does this all the time and then destroys itself, but it does follow this law in a roundabout way. Enough on antimatter, though.

Do you realize that matter and energy are the same thing? Just like space=time and particles=waves, matter=energy. This is why we have the atomic bomb and energy from nuclear power: because matter can be converted into energy. I'll make another blog on that later. This one's solely for astronomical stuff.

But other than that, do you really, truly, understand what this means? DO YOU? BECAUSE IT'S EVEN MORE AWESOME THAN THE MATTER=ENERGY THING.

THIS MEANS THAT THE ATOMS THAT MAKE UP OUR BODIES WERE FORMED IN HUGE STARS Yes, stars. stars stars stars

Let me explain. Matter cannot be created nor destroyed. Got it? Is it burned into your skull? Good.

That means that the elements that make us up had to be made in stars.

Let me explain.

In the early universe, only light elements, such as helium and hydrogen could form on their own. They would condense into gas clouds and create stars. The first stars were huge and unstable. Heavier elements had to be formed in these stars, since they could not/would not form on their own. Stars do this by fusing atoms to make bigger atoms. So, hydrogen goes to helium and so on, until the core of the star is composed of iron. When this happens, the star collapses in on itself. Really, really huge stars might form pulsars *more on those later* or even black holes. But many/most form supernovae or hypernovae: basically they blow up and puke their guts out to the universe.

The superheated gas created by these supernovae created even heavier elements. New stars formed from the gas. (star formation=gas collapsing on itself and doing fusion) Out of the stars, from the turmoil of their formation, came planets.

Out of the planets, of one in particular, came us.

Since the heavy elements that make up our bodies had to come from the supernovae, and matter cannot be created nor destroyed, then the atoms of every human being that has ever lived were made in an enormous star.

You can choose whether or not to agree with me; you can even argue that a god/gods did this, but I think that that's the most beautiful creation story that I've ever heard.