“We are all connected; To each other, biologically. To the earth, chemically. To the rest of the universe atomically.” Neil De Grasse Tyson
13.7 Billion years ago the universe erupted into
existence. Following the big bang the
universe consisted of a soup of light elements (mainly helium and hydrogen). After billions of years when the violence of
the big bang had subdued and conditions were just right, these elements
condensed to form stars which at their core were cooking all of the heavy
elements that make up the universe, such as carbon, nitrogen and oxygen. When these stars died, the new elements were
sent spinning out across the universe.
Today the most common elements in the universe are Hydrogen,
Helium, Oxygen, Carbon and Nitrogen (in that order). Apart from the relatively inert Helium
molecules, the human body consists of the same elements in the same basic order
H20 (Hydrogen and Oxygen), Carbon and Nitrogen.
The atoms that now make up your body, have been here for
billions of years before you. They have traversed
the vastness of space. Come together to
form stars and planets and comets. They
have been part of all of the oceans, the air and the land. They made up single cell organisms, fish and
dinosaurs. They have been the arrow
heads of early hunter gatherers and the glaciers of the ice ages. They were predatory animals and their prey,
they were new born babies and the dying breath of the elderly. They were blades of grass and gusts of wind. They
were fabrics and artistic expressions and weapons of destruction. And now
they have come together to be you... for a while. You are simply borrowing them
for the briefest period of time and once you die your atoms will go on to be
parts of the earth, the oceans, the sky and everything in between.
It is estimated that every human living today on any given
day consists of at least 20 billion atoms that were once part of Shakespeare
and a further 20 billion that were once part of Socrates, Julius Ceaser,
Einstein etc etc . Each breath you take consists of atoms that have
been inhaled and exhaled by every person throughout earth's history.
There is some conjecture about how long it takes for all the
atoms in your body to be replaced. But
some physicists approximate that 98% of your atoms are swapped or replaced
every year. so in actual fact they are
not strictly your atoms. They come
together to play a role as you for a brief period of your life and then go off
to do other things, leaving others to take their place. They have played the part of many things
throughout the history of time, and once they have played the role of you for a
while they move on a scatter to play different roles throughout the world and
the galaxy and the universe.
