6 Feb 2011
Every atom in your body came from a star that exploded. And, the atoms in your left hand probably came from a different star than your right hand. 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 – the 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 into your body is if those stars were kind enough to explode.
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If there’s one thing that I find truly mind-boggling it’s astrophysics. Especially the basic quandary that, if the universe is constantly expanding, what is it expanding into?
As it turns out that gets discussed a fair amount, including recently at io9.
So here’s a new mind-boggler:
But what happened at the very beginning to create space out of literally nothing? Physics doesn’t have an answer for that yet, I’m afraid, and we’ll presumably have to wait (at least) until a theory of quantum gravity comes along before we have one.
Lawrence M. Krauss (via topherchris)
(via evangotlib)
