The  

Star  In  You

By  Peter  Tyson

"Our  planet,  our  society,  and  we  ourselves  are  built  of  star  stuff."—Carl  Sagan,  Cosmos

Here's  an  amazing  fact  for  your  next  cocktail  party:  Every  single  atom  in  your  body—the  calcium  in  your  bones,  the  carbon  in  your
genes,  the  iron  in  your  blood,  the  gold  in  your  filling—was  created  in  a  star  billions  of  years  ago.  All  except  atoms  of  hydrogen  and  one
or  two  of  the  next  lightest  elements.  They  were  formed  even  earlier,  shortly  after  the  Big  Bang  began  13.7  billion  years  ago.

As  hard  as  it  might  be  to  believe,  every  atom  in  your  body,  astrophysicists  say,  originated
billions  of  years  ago  in  a  star  or  in  the  explosive  aftermath  of  the  Big  Bang.  Here,  a  close-­up
of  Polaris,  the  North  Star.  Enlarge
Enlarge

Photo  credit:  NASA,  ESA,  G.  Bacon  (STScI)

It's  true,  according  to  astrophysicists.  You  and  everything  around  you,  every  single  natural
and  man-­made  thing  you  can  see,  every  rock,  tree,  butterfly,  and  building,  comprises  atoms
that  originally  arose  during  the  Big  Bang  or,  for  all  but  the  lightest  two  or  three  elements,  from
millions  of  burning  and  exploding  stars  far  back  in  the  history  of  the  universe.  You  live
because  stars  died;;  it's  that  simple.

How  is  this  so?  How  can  you  possibly  be  a  walking  galaxy  of  fossil  stardust?  Well,  the  story  is
not  a  new  one,  but  it  bears  retelling,  if  only  because  its  working  out  was  one  of  the  finest
achievements  of  20th-­century  astrophysics—and  because  it's  so  astonishing.

The  start  of  it  all

The  story  begins  at  the  beginning,  as  in  the  Big  Bang.  That  is  when,  astrophysicists  say,  all  the  hydrogen  in  the  universe  came  into
being.  Initially  it  was  just  protons,  and  then,  as  the  young  universe  expanded  and  cooled,  these  became  bound  to  electrons,  forming
hydrogen  atoms.  The  very  hydrogen  atoms  in  the  H2O  that  makes  up  over  half  your  body  were  born  then.  They  didn't  come  from  your
parents;;  they  came  from  the  early  universe.  Did  you  have  any  idea  you  have  atoms  in  your  body  that  are  over  13  billion  years  old?

If  you  could  separate  one  hydrogen  atom  from  one  molecule  of  water  in  your  body,  shrink  down  to  its  atomically  tiny  size  like  the
scientists  in  Fantastic  Voyage,  then  reverse  time  and  follow  it  back  to  through  its  unimaginable  lifetime,  you  would  find  yourself  in  the
immediate  aftermath  of  the  Big  Bang.  That  very  hydrogen  atom,  an  atom  now  inside  you  as  you  read  this,  has  remained  unchanged
since  the  beginning  of  time.

Over  13  billion  years  since  the  Big  Bang,  hydrogen  and  helium  still  make  up  most  of  the
visible  matter  in  the  universe.  Nearly  10,000  galaxies  appear  in  this  Hubble  Ultra  Deep
Field  image.  Enlarge
Enlarge

Photo  credit:  NASA,  ESA,  and  N.  Pirzkal  (STScI/ESA)

The  Big  Bang  also  churned  out  helium,  the  next  lightest  element.  You  don't  have  any
helium  in  you,  unless  you  just  sucked  the  gas  out  of  a  birthday  balloon.  But  helium  is  the
second  most  common  element  after  hydrogen.  Together  they  make  up  more  than  98
percent  of  the  matter  in  the  universe.  (Luminous  matter,  that  is;;  dark  matter  is  a  whole
other  story.)  A  smattering  of  lithium  (element  3)  and  one  or  two  other  of  the  lightest
elements  also  formed  in  the  Bang,  but  these  were  negligible.

Everything  else,  every  other  chemical  element,  including  carbon,  oxygen,  nitrogen,  and  all  the  other  elements  essential  for  your  life,  is
thought  to  have  been  fabricated  in  stars.

How?  Well,  the  story  is  either  simple  or  horrendously  complex  depending  on  whether  you're  a  science  writer  or  a  scientist.  Here's  the
simple  story:

Table  for  118

First,  what  are  we  talking  about  when  we  talk  about  an  element?  A  chemical  element  is  a  substance  that  cannot  be  broken  down  or
changed  into  another  substance  using  chemical  means.  It  can  be  changed  using  nuclear  means,  which  is  what  happens  inside  stars.

Every  second,  the  sun  converts  about  500  million  tons  of  hydrogen  into  helium.

As  we  learn  in  high  school  chemistry—and  can  remind  ourselves  with  a  quick  glance  at  the  Periodic  Table
Periodic  Table—hydrogen,  the  lightest
element,  has  one  proton  in  its  nucleus  and  thus  is  given  the  atomic  number  1.  Helium  has  two  protons  and  so  is  number  2,  and  so  on  all
the  way  up  to  uranium,  which,  with  92  protons  in  its  nucleus,  is  the  heaviest  of  the  "naturally  occurring"  elements.

Remarkably,  all  life  on  Earth,  all  everything  we  see  around  us,  consists  of  various  combinations  of  those  92  elements.  There  are  still
heavier  elements,  ranging  from  neptunium  (93)  all  the  way  up  to  the  unofficially  named  ununoctium  (118),  though  with  the  exception  of
trace  amounts  of  neptunium  and  plutonium  (94),  these  are  not  found  naturally  on  Earth.
An  artist's  impression  of  how  the  very  early  universe—less  than  one  billion  years
old—might  have  looked  during  an  intense  period  of  hydrogen  conversion  into
myriad  stars  Enlarge
Enlarge

Photo  credit:  Science:  NASA  and  K.  Lanzetta  (SUNY).  Art:  Adolf  Schaller  for
STScI.

Stars  are  born

How  did—and  do,  for  the  process  continues  today—all  the  chemical  elements
first  come  into  existence?

Several  hundred  million  years  after  the  Big  Bang,  about  13  billion  years  ago,  the
hydrogen  and  helium  in  the  early  universe  began  coalescing  into  gas  clouds,
which,  in  turn,  collapsed  into  the  first  stars.  Gravity,  that  not-­to-­be-­denied  force,
caused  these  newborn  stars  to  contract,  heating  their  cores  to  temperatures  high  enough  to  ignite  their  hydrogen  and  trigger  its  fusion
into  helium.

This  is  the  first  link  in  a  chain  of  thermonuclear  reactions  that,  depending  on  the  size  of  the  star  and  its  fate,  bring  about  the  genesis  of
all  the  other  chemical  elements  up  to  about  californium,  element  98.  (Heavier  elements  than  that  are  produced  only  in  particle
accelerators,  physicists  believe.)  Imagine  starting  out  in  your  kitchen  with  just  a  single  natural  ingredient  and,  after  baking  it  in  your
oven,  winding  up  with  all  other  possible  natural  ingredients.  This  is  what  the  universe  has  done  with  hydrogen.

The  burning  of  H  to  He  is  what  our  star,  the  sun,  does  for  a  living.  In  the  searing  heat  of  its  core—about  27  million  °F—the  reaction  of
four  hydrogen  nuclei  fusing  to  become  one  helium  nucleus  happens  over  and  over  and  over  again,  ad  infinitum.  Every  second,  the  sun
converts  about  500  million  tons  of  hydrogen  into  helium.  (And  for  every  helium  atom  formed,  roughly  a  trillion  photons  are  emitted  from
the  sun's  surface.  This  is  why  we  wear  sunglasses.)

Cooking  elements

Our  star  enables  us  to  live,  but  at  this  stage  in  its  own  life,  it  doesn't  give  us  any  elements  heavier  than  helium.  It's  not  massive  enough.
With  stars  more  massive  than  ours,  and  up  to  about  eight  times  its  mass**,  gravity  is  forcible  enough  to  compress  the  core  sufficiently  to
trigger  nuclear  reactions  that  produce  heavier  elements,  starting  with  carbon  (element  6)  and  oxygen  (8).  In  such  cores,  the  heat  is  high
enough,  about  180  million  °F,  to  force  three  helium  nuclei  to  fuse  into  a  carbon  nucleus,  or  four  helium  nuclei  into  an  oxygen  nucleus,
millions  of  times  over.  This  will  happen  in  the  sun  when  it  becomes  a  red  giant  in  five  billion  years.

In  its  fiery  core,  our  star,  the  sun,  produces  only  a  single  chemical  element—helium—over  and  over  again.  Enlarge
Enlarge  Photo  credit:  NASA
In  very  massive  stars,  those  of  more  than  eight  solar  masses,  the  force  of  gravity  drives  the
temperature  in  the  core  up  so  outlandishly  high  that  it  triggers  thermonuclear  reactions  that
create  elements  all  the  way  up  to  iron  (26).  At  1,080  million  °F,  carbon  fuses  into  neon;;  at
2,700  million  °F,  oxygen  fuses  into  silicon;;  and  at  7,200  million  °F,  silicon  fuses  into  iron.

Iron,  alas,  marks  a  major  turning  point  when  it  comes  to  fusing  ever-­heavier  elements  inside
stars.  All  the  way  up  to  iron,  every  time  a  new  fusion  reaction  occurs,  some  heat  is  released.
With  iron,  no  other  rearrangement  of  nuclei  can  generate  any  more  energy.  But  stars  do
form  elements  heavier  than  iron,  including  cherished  ones  like  silver  and  gold,  dangerous
ones  like  radon  and  uranium,  and  ones  you've  never  heard  of  (or  could  pronounce  if  you
had)  like  praseodymium  and  ytterbium.

Two  ways  to  you

Stars  have  one  of  two  ways  to  produce  these  heavier-­than-­iron  elements—and,  not
incidentally,  to  get  them  and  all  the  other  elements  forged  in  their  nuclear  furnaces  out  into
space  so  they  can  be  incorporated  into  new  stars,  planets,  and  people.

Some  of  that  widely  dispersed  stardust  is  holding  you  up  right  now.

The  first  way  occurs  in  red  giants.  These  are  stars  that  have  burned  up  all  the  hydrogen  in  their  centers.  When  that  happens,  the  star
becomes,  as  the  astrophysicist  Craig  Wheeler  has  put  it,  somewhat  schizophrenic:  The  core  loses  energy,  contracts,  and  heats  up  even
as  the  envelope—the  rest  of  the  star  outside  the  core—gains  energy,  expands,  and  cools  (and  appears  redder).  The  expansion  is  quite,
well,  expansive:  When  our  sun  becomes  a  red  giant,  it  will  grow  so  large  that  it  will  engulf  and  evaporate  the  inner  planets,  including  the
Earth.

Some  red  giants  last  long  enough  to  create  elements  in  their  cores  heavier  than  iron  through  something  called  the  s-­process,  for  slow.
Over  a  time  scale  of  thousands  of  years,  the  s-­process  can  result  in  the  manufacture  of  elements  all  the  way  up  to  bismuth  (83).  These
get  pulled  to  the  star's  surface  by  convection  and  sloughed  off  into  space  via  the  star's  stellar  wind.  Some  of  that  widely  dispersed
stardust  is  holding  you  up  right  now.

This  spectacular  false-­color  image  shows  Cassiopeia  A,  the  remnant  of  a  supernova.  At  the  center  of  the  image  lies  the  dead  star,  while
surrounding  it  is  the  rapidly  expanding  shell  of  material  blasted  away  from  the  star  as  it  died.  Enlarge
Enlarge

Photo  credit:  NASA/JPL-­Caltech/O.  Krause  (Steward  Observatory)

Elements  heavier  than  bismuth  only  arise  through  the  r-­process,  for  rapid.  How
rapid?  Seconds  flat.  The  r-­process  is  what  happens  when  a  star  explodes  in  a
supernova.  It's  easy  for  us  to  think  of  stars  as  lasting  essentially  forever,  but  the
most  massive  stars  survive  only  a  few  million  years—a  cosmic  moment,  really—
and  when  they  go,  they  go  fast.

What  happens?  When  a  red  giant  gets  to  the  stage  of  having  fused  all  its  lighter
elements  and  is  left  with  an  iron  core,  the  star  can  no  longer  retain  its  equilibrium
—heat  energy  pushing  out  as  gravity  pulls  in.  Gravity  suddenly  gains  the  upper
hand,  collapsing  the  core  all  at  once  to  billions  of  times  the  density  of  the  Earth.
The  star  then  blows  itself  apart  in  an  astronomical  cataclysm.  For  a  brief  period,  it
shines  as  brightly  as  an  entire  galaxy  and  releases  as  much  energy  as  our  sun
will  in  its  10-­billion-­year  lifetime.

In  the  first  few  seconds,  protons  in  the  atoms  created  during  the  star's  life  collide  with  highly  energetic  neutrons,  fashioning  in  an  instant
all  the  naturally  occurring  elements  heavier  than  bismuth  up  to  uranium,  and  even  a  few  short-­lived  still-­heavier  elements  such  as
plutonium  and  californium.  All  these  blast  out  into  space  at  millions  of  miles  an  hour,  seeding  the  interstellar  medium  with  the  atoms  that
eventually  end  up  in  new  stars,  new  solar  systems,  and,  in  your  case,  you.

In  this  view  of  the  Carina  Nebula,  the  Hubble  Space  Telescope  captured  a  tumult  of  star  birth
and  death.  In  the  image,  green  corresponds  to  hydrogen,  blue  to  oxygen,  and  red  to  sulfur—
three  of  the  92  naturally  occurring  elements  that  space  has  bequeathed  to  us.  Enlarge
Enlarge

Photo  credit:  For  Hubble  Image:  NASA,  ESA,  N.  Smith  (University  of  California,  Berkeley),
and  The  Hubble  Heritage  Team  (STScI/AURA).  For  CTIO  Image:  N.  Smith  (University  of
California,  Berkeley)  and  NOAO/AURA/NSF

The  birth  of  you

Over  time,  molecular  clouds  of  gas  and  dust  out  in  deep  space  develop  from  those  strewn
elements  and  begin  to  contract  under  their  own  gravity.  Such  clouds  are  almost  all  hydrogen
and  helium,  but  they've  got  a  scatter  of  heavier  elements,  too.  And  the  most  abundant
elements  begin  to  assemble  into  molecules,  simple  ones  like  water  (H2O)  and  more  complex
ones  like  the  sugar  glycoaldehyde  (C2H4O2).  Astronomers  can  identify  these  compounds,
and  individual  elements,  using  spectrometers.
Eventually,  a  kind  of  raw-­clay  star  called  a  proto-­star  forms,  with  a  disk  of  material  surrounding  it  that  will  eventually  beget  planets.  That
process  happened  in  our  own  solar  system  about  five  billion  years  ago,  resulting  in  the  sun,  the  planets,  and,  five  billion  years  later,  you.

Did  you  have  any  idea  you  have  atoms  in  your  body  that  are  over  13  billion  years  old?

Just  how  those  atoms  and  molecules  that  ended  up  on  our  planet  went  from  non-­living  to  living  remains  one  of  the  great  unanswered
questions  in  science.  But  where  the  elements  came  from  to  start  with  has  now  been  worked  out,  in  broad  strokes  anyway,  to
astrophysicists'  widespread  satisfaction.  It  is  an  amazing  story,  isn't  it?

Sources
Altschuler,  Daniel  R.  2002.  Children  of  the  Stars:  Our  Origin,  Evolution  and  Destiny.  Cambridge  University  Press.

Wheeler,  J.  Craig.  2007.  Cosmic  Catastrophes:  Exploding  Stars,  Black  Holes,  and  Mapping  the  Universe.  Cambridge  University  Press.

Zeilik,  Michael,  2002.  Astronomy:  The  Evolving  Universe,  9th  edition.  Cambridge  University  Press.