we are all stardust
no but really
I mean except for the hydrogen in you. that came from the dawn of time itself
this chart changed my fucking life
you are 10% hydrogen by mass. all of it is leftovers from the raw energy of the explosive first moment of the universe
the very same hydrogen in the water in your blood, that hydrogen. all of it formed in the immediate first seconds of creation. it took nearly 400,000 years for it to cool down enough to become an actual gas as opposed to a dense hot plasma, and literally the entirety of time more to finally end up in the water you drank today
we have not really had much time with this information, specifically we hadn't observed a neutron star collision until august of 2017.
we are getting far better and more precise at doing astronomy and as we get lucky and observe more we begin to understand the processes that brought us to where we are now, and its absurd, it is an absurd history and it's phenomenal
the very stars themselves died so we may live
@starwall Can I quote you on that?