TAG THE ATOMS

Unless you are a scewball religious fundamentalist, or an idiot (or both), you understand that it is determined, beyond any question or doubt, that approximately 17 billion years ago, there was a cosmic implosion or explosion or “event” of creation, that created the universe we are now surrounded by. What there was before that is theiretical. The last 17 billion years is not theory. It is fact. I cannot say “who” or “what” gave rise to this big bang event. I can only tell you it happened and here we, and the current cosmos, are. 


Atoms are, also not theoretically, but without question, the basic builsing blocks of the stars, the matter, the planets, the comets, the moons, —- all and any matter, of any kind, any place in the 17 billion year old cosmic theatre is made of atoms. They are the smallest thing into which matter may be broken down, and still be what it is. 

There are 100 or so atomic, identifiable substances. The only difference between you and the rocks in your garden, or the rosebushes, is the ratio of one type atom to another, in the object. You and a car tire are made of carbon atoms and a bunch of other atoms that are identical. You have a different mixture than the tire... but the atoms that make you up? They all blew out of the stars, over the billions of years, and are exactly the same as they have been for billions of years. When you and the tire die and decompose... the atoms that made you up? They return to the pool to be reused to amke something else. Another rock? A chicken? A grain of sand? Your great grandchildren?

“Every atom in your body came from a star that exploded. And, the atoms in your left hand probably came from a different star than your right hand. It really is the most poetic thing I know about physics: You are all stardust. You couldn’t be here if stars hadn’t exploded, because the elements - the carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, iron, all the things that matter for evolution and for life - weren’t created at the beginning of time. They were created in the nuclear furnaces of stars, and the only way for them to get into your body is if those stars were kind enough to explode. So, forget Jesus. The stars died so that you could be here today.”
― Lawrence M. Krauss