9 Mind-Blowing Facts You Probably Didn’t Know About Yourself
1. You Are A Made Of Stardust
It sounds like a line from an airy-fairy poem, but this is a solid scientific fact. Here's how:
The first atom to form after the Big Bang was hydrogen, which youve probably seen at the starting point of every periodic table back in Chemistry class. Well, those simple little hydrogen atoms started clumping together under the force of gravity (at a whopping 15 million degrees Farenheit) and then fused together to create helium. Boom! A star is formed.
As that star ages, it eventually runs out of hydrogen atoms in its core, so it begins fusing with larger helium atoms, giving out more energy. When that runs out, the star continues to fuse heavier and heavier elements lithium, beryllium, carbon until it finally reaches iron. Huge stars (eight times bigger than our sun) die in violent explosions called supernovas, spraying all of these newly forged elements into the galaxy.
Some of these elements then clump together and, you guessed it, make a planet. In fact they made everything youre looking at, everything youre touching right now and they made you. Almost 93% of the human body mass is made up of stardust: oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, calcium and phosphorus. From those impressive elements comes a perfectly symmetrical ball of cells that merges into human shape, forming the first orifice you have - your anus. Unfortunately, some people never evolve from that first development.
Astronomer Carl Sagan once famously stated: "We are a way for the universe to know itself. Some part of our being knows this is where we came from. We long to return. And we can, because the cosmos is also within us. We're made of star stuff.
Next time youre wishing on a star, it might just be your 14 billion-year-old ancestor.
Looking at yourself in the mirror a little differently after that? Do share your own unbelievable body facts in the comments below!