Stellar Nucleosynthesis - From Inanimate to Alive

[Shayne T]

If the suggestion that all matter, or the vast majority of matter, that makes up the Earth and everything on it, including humans, was originally forged within dying stars and their resulting supernovae, meaning that we are literally constructed from stardust, would the following statement be accurate?

“We, all of us, are what happens when a primordial mixture of hydrogen and helium evolves for so long that it begins to ask where it came from.”

This was said by Jill Tartar at a TED talk a few years back, and is the most beautiful sentence I have ever heard. The fact that non living, inanimate things such as stars could very well be the factories of life, when given enough time. The fact that evolution is not confined to biological beings, but is evident in non-living systems which eventually evolve to the point where life becomes possible. The fact that life and the cosmos are one and the same, in the sense that the universe is within as, as much as we are within it

 

[CapnGranite]

https://www.astro.uni-koeln.de/cdms/molecules
Molecules in Space

I discovered this site shortly after it was started and have been fascinated with it ever since. When i was in high school in the early '60's we didn't have GATE programs, but the schools on the Monterey Peninsula tried to have us track with researchers in fields we seemed to be interested in. At the time, mine was biochemistry/biomedical and I was mentored by Joshua Lederberg at Stanford. He quickly saw that I wasn't all that keen on fruit flies and genetics and suggested I consider exobiology. He said something to the effect that the key to the origin of life and evolution was "out there". While i never worked in astrobiology, it has remained of great interest. It's also been useful in understanding deep carbon and potentially primordial hydrocarbons in the inner earth.

 

[GeorgeDishman]

"Hydrogen is a light, odorless gas, which, given enough time, turns into people."

Edward Harrison in the Smithsonian Magazine, December 1995.

 

[Drakkith]

If the suggestion that all matter, or the vast majority of matter, that makes up the Earth and everything on it, including humans, was originally forged within dying stars and their resulting supernovae, meaning that we are literally constructed from stardust, would the following statement be accurate?

“We, all of us, are what happens when a primordial mixture of hydrogen and helium evolves for so long that it begins to ask where it came from.”

It's accurate in a broad sense, yes.

 

[Shayne T]

"Hydrogen is a light, odorless gas, which, given enough time, turns into people."

Edward Harrison in the Smithsonian Magazine, December 1995.

Amazing quote