We Are Stardust

is so far removed from us. I mean, it's a it's a it's a Titanic event, one of the most powerful events that that regularly occurs in the universe, and it takes place vast distances of both time and space, and yet we can find something in there to connect with and to to to take solace in and and leave it feeling better about our place in this vast sea of cosmos. What's the life stile goal in Macro Right, it's a dying star and it's absolutely brilliant. Right, it's

visual fireworks. It's a star that suddenly increases greatly in brightness because of a catastrophic explosion that ejects most of its mass. So it's a dramatic storyline. So because you know how could you not be caught by this, this thing that is imploding and ejecting most of its mass. Yeah, I mean it's the death of a star. It's kind of like the death of a guy. Like we're totally

into that idea as well. Yeah yeah, um. And it's really powerful and the core of a massive star runs out of nuclear fuel, right, this is this is the sad part. I guess you could sit sad. It's not so much sad and collapses under its own gravity to form an ultra dense object known as a neutron star.

But only so much material can compress into the neutron stars, so some of the original stars collapsing gaseous outer layers can't fit, so instead they sort of bounce off the neutron star, and then this triggers a shock wave that bulldozes back were the outer layers and blows the star

to smithereens. Yeah. The way, the way I really like to think about it is basically, you have a situation where a working star, a functional living star, is having to burn massive amounts of energy to expand against the force of its own crushing gravity. So I like to think of it like a poorly run but well financed business, you know, where there's a lot of moneys, a lot of money is being spent to keep keep up these offices. It's like, uh, the company that Tom have havever heard

a season sorry his character in Parks and Rector. It's just spen in all this just mad money and they're not actually bringing money in, but all this money is being spent to keep it out. And then what happens was it Tommy Fresh Industries or something like it was something along those lines, and they were hiring NBA stars just hang out at the off the hands from cocktails to people, um and uh. And then of course they run out of money and it just collapses. And that's

kind of what happens with with the Star. Um. It reaches the point where there's nothing else to burn to sustain it, to to to keep it fight against its own massive gravity. And when that happens, it collapses. In some cases you end up with a singularity, you end up with a black hole. But in other cases you end up with this enormous explosion that Jettison's uh, you know, all the shrimp cocktail and NBA stars elsewhere it happened

to the universe. Yeah, and it's really helpful to use these supernova nova plural to actually study the universe, right, because it's something that we can see, something that we know about. UM. It used to be that we thought this was terribly uncommon, but it turns out that it is. Uh, these stars exploding, this very violent catastrophic events are more common than we thought. UM. And again just so you

guys understand, um, how immense this is. They emit in a few seconds and energy equivalent to what they've emitted for their entire lifetime. UM. Our galaxy is about twelve billion years old, so we have seen well not you and I when you guys out there personally, but two hundred million stars exploded during its lifetime. Right. Yeah, I was looking at a at a study where from April two thousand three to August two thousand and six, the Canada, France,

Hawaii telescope watch four parts of the sky. Each section that it looked at was about sixteen times the area of a full moon, and which is roughly one of the entire sky. And during that time period they observed two hundred forty one Type one A supernova. So just to give you an idea of like how often these things are happening. Um. And actually I did a blog post. The guy did a neat thing where he he set

this to music, like he sped it up. And then every time there's a supernova and one of these quadrants that lights up and there's a note and it's really cool. Yeah, and it's it's a great event. I believe in nineteen eighty seven they were actually able to uh witnessed an explosion of the nineteen seven nine seven a supernova which they had had their telescopes trained on. Uh. But you know, I'm vniched down. They actually blew up and they were

able to study it quite carefully. Um. But again it brings back to this this whole idea that you put forth, which is, you know, we can't help but look up in the night sky and feel connected. And now that we know a lot more about a supernova, we can better understand that these raw materials hurling out in the universe are actually very deeply connected to our existence. Yeah, which is I mean you look back at like just

sort of religious and spiritual ideas. I mean everybody, it's probably not everybody, but but you see a lot of people into the idea of being, say, a child of God or being or having some sort of a connection to a spiritual or heavenly realm. So strip away religious and spirituality and uh and just look at science. And that's what what we're looking at here, the idea that there is a connection between these titanic and timeless events, uh playing out in the cosmos and our own small,

uh little lives. Yeah, and let's talk just a little bit about sort of the nuts and bolts of the supernervo so that we can all sort of get a firm understanding of what's happening at the center of a supernova. So a star can go supernova in one of two waves. There's type one supernova, in which a star accumulates matter from a nearby neighbor until runaway nuclear reaction nick nites.

And then there's the type two supernova. And this is sort of the more spectacular version, in which a star runs out of nuclear fuel and collapses under its own gravity, right, which is the kind of the the collapsing business analogy I used earlier. Yes, Yes, what happens is that as it begins to die, it eventually runs out of hydrogen

and then helium fuel at its core. So gradually heavier elements build up at the center, and then it becomes layered like an onion, with elements becoming lighter towards the outside of the star. And this is where we start to see the spiraling effect of those materials um throwing off of the star. Basically, so that shock wave that we talked about earlier, that actually shoots out the whole outer part of the star, and the shock waves compressed

the gas and space, which triggers new star formations. Okay, which is really key to us into the universe. Right, you have situations, um where just imagine just some empty space in the universe where you just have a bunch of dust molecules just floating out there doing nothing. Uh. You know, it's like a quiet town. I can think of it as like a quiet Midwestern town. Everything's just

going about its business, tumbleweeds. But then what happens, right, the hot young rebel on its bike rolls through town, right and stirs everybody up. Well, that's kind of what happens when a shock wave from a supernova moves through

these particles. It's it mixes things up a little. Suddenly you have pieces colliding into one another you have in these little bits of dust begin a process called acretion, where the gravity of minute little pieces of matter begin drawing in other many pieces of matter until and in this snowball effect takes off where it gets grows bigger and bigger, eventually becoming uh, planets, stars, new systems, new galaxies. And this you know this, this gun slinger, this rebel

riding into town. This is happening super fast because the core of a supernova supernova is larger than the Earth, containing about a million times the mass of the Earth. So when a star like say the supernova seven A, dies, it collapses to the size of the Earth, which then collapses to the size of London and approximately one second, I mean, this is that's amazing, right, So this, this h gunslinger shows up and you know this, this ball

of fire. And you know, if that's not dramatic enough, consider that the materials that spiral off the supernova into the universe during its final seconds have been billions of the years in the making, right millions. For instance, we know that all the hydrogen burns to helium in ten million years. So this is what's happening when a star dies, right, it starts to take its own material and burn off.

So all that hydrogen burns to helium in ten million years um, and then gravity starts to contract the star, making it hotter and hotter, and then helium burns to carbon in one million years, and then all the carbon

burns to form nitrogen in one hundred thousand years. Oxygen burns to silicon in ten thousand years, and then during the last day, this is the coolest part, the last day in the life of the star, all the silicon burns to form iron in one day, and this really is the death now, since iron is tightly bound um in terms of its nucleus and it has nothing to

give in the form of fuel to the star. The really cool thing about this is that these are all the elements that the universe is made of, that the Earth is made of, and pretty much what we are made of. Right, So every atom in your body, according according to Lawrence Cross, and he's a theoretical physicist, was once in a star that exploded. Two hundred million stars have created the elements to make up your body. Hydrogen, carbon,

and lithium were part of the Big Bang. So this is where the beautiful quasi spiritual idea enters the picture. The idea that are humble, little fragile body that are in the process of growing old and dying. Uh contain uh, the elements that were once a part of the of one of the most colossal, powerful events that regularly happens in the universe, And they were once the part part of stars. We're we're made out of these stars were made out of the celestial gods. We are kind of

like the trickle down from that. Yeah. So if you look at in the night sky and you fill an affinity with it, then it's because we you know, it's the building blocks of us. Right, And Lawrence Cross says, you know, the atoms in your left hand probably came from a different star than your right hand. He says, I mean, this is a great quote. It really is the most poetic thing I know about physics. You are

all stardust. You couldn't be here if stars hadn't exploded, because the elements carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, iron, all the things that matter for evolution and for life weren't created at the beginning of time. They were created in the nuclear furnaces of stars. And the only way for them to get in your body is if those stars were kind enough to explode. He says, so forget Jesus, the stars died so that you could be here today. Well, we'll see. That's nice. And now I've also read estimates that of

the mass in our bodies has actually started us. So it's a good chunk. It's a good chunk. And it just sounds better to say all of it though, because no one wants to be like, like we are divine. You know, that's that's a weird percentage. Why I just go for a hundreds, right, yeah, exactly, why not? Uh, let's not split hairs. But um, you know, it's an interesting perspective when you think about that your existence in a in a the universe. And we actually just did

a podcast concerning black swans. Black swans being these events that out liars that seem like, you know, you couldn't predict them. Um, and this idea that black swans are everywhere all the time, and in fact our existence is a black swan, right um. And Lawrence Cross would actually say that there's there's many black swans in this universe. We just have to look for them. And we have a lot many more connections to the universe than just

being you know, part of Stardust. Ruminate on that for just a moment, and we will be back with more on the cosmic origins of your atoms. All right, we're back, and we're actually going to discuss a few other um kind of trippy cosmic connections that you can make to the outer dark without having to really as much on the whole star dust supernova situation. Okay, here's here's one. Are we possibly the extraterrestrials that we've been talking about? Ah,

you are, of course talking about exogenesis. I am talking about the idea that life immer originates not on Earth but somewhere else, the raw materials for it at least, right, that the raw materials at least or you know, you could go crazy and say, get into some ancient alien stuff, but that's uh, that's for another podcast for this though. You're talking about, um, the idea that the raw materials

end up arriving here um via asteroids meteor rides. So yeah, yeah, And it turns out of Antarctica is really helpful in trying to study this because it's just this vast white landscape right, really easy to spot meteorites, particularly Martian meteorites. And since we have looked at the soil composition on Mars, we already know that when we find a meteorite that it could have come from Mars when we slice it

and dish it and look at the composition. So what has become apparent is that we are polluted regularly from material from Mars and vice versa. So materialist from Earth getting knocked out from the surface, and they also make their way to Mars. Um. Now sometimes we send things

to Mars too. It's true we did have little care packages um cookies, but we also known Again, this was Laurence Cruss talking about that microbes in this Siberian desert can exist without water under harsh conditions for months or even years uh and in door mis state, and he says no doubt that if microbes existed in a rock on Mars, it could make a six month trip to Earth once they were knocked out from this service with no problem. So the big question is did life on

Earth arise here or somewhere else? Maybe we are all the extraterrestrials right, And the process of life traveling from one planet to another is called pan spermium. And we have an article on how stuff Works about space collisions. If you look, if you just go to a house stuff works dot com, type in space collisions and you'll find a cool little article talking about various cosmic heavy hitters smacking together. And also um the idea of pants spermia,

the idea of life spreading from one world to another. Yeah, and he also uh mourns across us people to think about taking a breath, think about oxygen for just one moment. Okay, now I can say this. Consider that life evolved on Earth for two billion years before it began to produce

and use oxygen. Organisms use photosynthesis, which use carbon carbon dioxide, and all those little dudes produce little puffs of oxygen, and over millions of years, created more and more oxygen in our atmosphere until boom here we are taking it for granted. Um, he says. Lawrence Croft says that in every breath you take, they're an average of at least ten oxygen atoms from the dying breath of Caesar. When he said at brute wow, he's waxing poetic hardcore on this.

He totally he's pulling out all the stops because he's like, you know, it's not just as as I think he referred to it before, just a bunch of dead people's breath that we're taking in. Yeah, because because I mean, we're also you could also say, oh, I'm also drawing in the breath of every inane thing that has ever been said by a politician, Hollywood starlets, the dark side of that. But it's true. Every time you breathe, you're

breathing in atoms of everyone who has ever lived. So you know, if there's someone sitting next to you that you just might be annoyed with, you just feel like, oh man, I can't I can't muster any sort of empathy for this person. Uh. You know, you just have to realize that we actually are all eat out of the same material um, and we're all breathing the same

funky breath of the earth. But it reminds me of the I did a block pist a while back about the the idea that all drinking water was poo at one point, which again Lawrence Cross will say he has some interesting things to say about that. Um. He says that it's just really interesting. He says, every time you drink in water, you're drinking in the sweat from your parents, coupling that created you. I know, I know, even this, this fancy lacroix in my hand, it seems so pure,

so wide spread our materials. We just and and he says also, like any sort of exprement from any sort of sludge that ever existed on this earth, you're also taking it. But this is really cool too. If you prick your finger and drop a drop of your blood in the Thames, for instance, Um, a year later, you could take a tablespoon of water from the ocean and there would be some of the atoms of your blood

in that water. According to Lawrence Cross, Yeah, it does drive home the interconnectedness of it all, and that there is um. I mean, we don't stand outside the cycle of mass and matter and energy. That we are a part of this. Uh, we are part of cosmos. Really, you know that's true. So often we think of science

is something separate from us rather than within us. Yeah, I mean, that's just that's just the where our minds work, and it's one of the reasons we end up, you know, having all these blinders to figuring out how consciousness works and how can we end up creating all these uh uh these ideas of spirituality and religion. She sort of peep beyond those blinders that you're forced to recognize that we are a part of the universe. It's it's the hippie dippi as that may sound, you know, it's we are.

I mean, there you go. Okay, so now you've all put us in a mood for a little Carl. Second, why don't you hit us with a little well, yeah, that imagine A number of people were like, how are they going to mention that Carl Sagan quote or not? What's a matter with these people there? In fact, they're already writing the emails. How could you leave out the Carl Sagon quote? Well, I have the Car sagend quote

here for you. And interesting fact, we considered, um, trying to get somebody to do a Car Sagan voice for us for this, but there was a lot of discussion about, well, he doesn't really do a Carl Sagan voice. He does a Kermit the Frog voice that kind of sounds like, kind of sounds like Carl Sagan. Do do we do we get him to do this in his current voice? Do we ask him to tweak it into a Sagan?

Is that cool? Is that because we love Sagan, we don't want to and we love Kermit, you know, right, And then there's an other dude in the office that always wears a turtleneck. But then that doesn't quite come across. Yeah, that only works if you're in the studio with us. So I'm just gonna read it in my serious voice. I guess matter is much older than life. Billions of years before the Sun and Earth even formed, Adams were being synthesized in the insides of hot stars and then

returned to space when the stars blew themselves up. Newly formed planets were made out of the stellar debris, and Earth and every living thing are made of star stuff like that, like yeah, yeah, yeah, this the star stuff is is um Yeah, that's it's just a great quote and it really and he drives some some much of what Sagan did so well that he was able to convey this uh, this passion for uh, for for cosmos, for for the universe, for for space, for sciences, for

you know, neuroscience, and another related to areas as well, was able to relay that passion for it and make it feel like a part of us and not something that we stood apart from indeed, incidentally, there is also around the same time about the late sixties of when when Sagan was thinking about this stuff and formulating these, uh these ideas, you also had a young Joni Mitchell wrote wrote a song called Woodstock, which features the lyrics

were start us we're golden, We're billion year old carbon And as we close out the podcast, you were actually gonna play a portion of a cover by the by the band Austra all of that song wood Stock that I find particularly snazzy. So but before we get to that real quick, if you need to contact us and you want to reach out to us about anything we've talked about in this podcast or other podcasts, you can find us on Facebook as stuff to Blow the Mind, and you can find us on Twitter as blow the Mind.

And you can always drop us a line at blow the Mind. At how stuff Works dot com, we are start we are, we are. We be sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join how Stuff Work staff as we explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow.