ThatCanadianGuy
July 31st, 2008, 06:01 PM
The late Carl Sagan (famous for his own Cosmos series) is known for a very popular quote: "you're made of star stuff". But what does that really mean?
In the first several billion years after the Big Bang, only a few base elements existed; hydrogen and helium mainly. This allowed for the formation of stars, but not much else. However, the stars that formed began to make elements of their own! In the cores of most stars, the fusion of hydrogen into helium is the source of their power, but as time went on more elements developed; metals that would provide the material needed for planets to form billions of years later. So, how did this all go down? Well, our very own Sun is a second or third generation star, which means that the Sun itself formed from the remains of some other supergiant that blew itself up 5 billion years ago. But this supergiant was special, much like other second generation stars; in the core of this supergiant some metals and other gases had started to form. So, as the Sun began as a dense cloud of stellar material; rocky lumps started to form a disc around it's center. Over time these debris would collide in such densely packed real-estate, and soon only the largest of the rocky lumps, and ones that had fairly stable orbits, would survive.
These rocky lumps: Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars! So when you go far enough back in time, we can really attribute our existence to a star that exploded 5 billion years ago. And as a by-product... we're really "made of star stuff"!
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Cosmos Fact of the Day: The core of the Sun fuses 700,000 tons of hydrogen into 650,000 tons of helium EVERY SECOND of every day. That's roughly the size of seven of the world's largest oil tanker ships... every second!
In the first several billion years after the Big Bang, only a few base elements existed; hydrogen and helium mainly. This allowed for the formation of stars, but not much else. However, the stars that formed began to make elements of their own! In the cores of most stars, the fusion of hydrogen into helium is the source of their power, but as time went on more elements developed; metals that would provide the material needed for planets to form billions of years later. So, how did this all go down? Well, our very own Sun is a second or third generation star, which means that the Sun itself formed from the remains of some other supergiant that blew itself up 5 billion years ago. But this supergiant was special, much like other second generation stars; in the core of this supergiant some metals and other gases had started to form. So, as the Sun began as a dense cloud of stellar material; rocky lumps started to form a disc around it's center. Over time these debris would collide in such densely packed real-estate, and soon only the largest of the rocky lumps, and ones that had fairly stable orbits, would survive.
These rocky lumps: Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars! So when you go far enough back in time, we can really attribute our existence to a star that exploded 5 billion years ago. And as a by-product... we're really "made of star stuff"!
*******************
Cosmos Fact of the Day: The core of the Sun fuses 700,000 tons of hydrogen into 650,000 tons of helium EVERY SECOND of every day. That's roughly the size of seven of the world's largest oil tanker ships... every second!