As humans, we are looking for moments of wonder in our world. Even in the everyday acts of everyday life, these moments are abundant if you look closely enough. Take the simple act of having a shower for example. Have you ever thought about the water you bathe in? Water or H20 is made up of hydrogen and oxygen. Look at the hydrogen both in the water and in you. This hydrogen has been around as we know it since the beginning of time. At 13.8 billion years old, all of the hydrogen in the universe was created just moments after the Big Bang. Everything has an origin. At the core of every star, hydrogen drives nuclear reactions that propel the stars and supply our universe with light. These nuclear reactions are responsible for almost every other element except helium, lithium, boron and beryllium. Boring old boron, a main component of borax soap, is created in the empty vacuum of space when a high-energy proton collides with a carbon or oxygen atom. Surprisingly exciting origins for a typical household cleaner. The reaction, which ignites a star for the first time, fuses hydrogen into helium, releasing energy in the form of light. The light that warms your skin came from the core of the sun about 100,000 years ago before reaching the surface and eventually you. But what about the iron in your blood? Or the carbon in your DNA? Driven by the intense heat and pressure in the stars, heavier elements melt together in chain reactions. The reactions that occur and the elements that are formed during the evolution of stars largely depend on the star’s mass. More massive stars can continue to fuse elements until their cores are mostly iron. At this point, fusion reactions are energetically costly because melting iron requires more energy than it generates. An iron core therefore means the beginning of the end for a star. Elements beyond iron do not arise from this, but from the death of massive stars as supernovae, for example. In medium-sized stars like our sun, an important element that is fused is carbon-12, a type of carbon that forms the backbone of our DNA. Carbon-12 is created by fusing two helium atoms to form a short-lived beryllium atom. The beryllium atom exists just long enough to fuse with another helium atom to form carbon-12. All fusion reactions follow Einstein’s famous equation. In the case of carbon-12, the energy contained in the helium-beryllium combination is almost exactly that of an excited carbon-12 atom. This greatly increases the likelihood that this will happen. If it weren’t for that, carbon-12 would not be made in stars, and the element essential to life would not exist. The creation of carbon-12 is wonderful to me and now I hope you are too. In summary, we are not that different, us and stars. We’re all the same stuff, just arranged differently. Sign up for one of our newsletters:
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As humans, we are looking for moments of wonder in our world. Even in the everyday acts of everyday life, these moments are abundant if you look closely enough.
Take, for example, the simple action of having a shower. Have you ever thought about the water you bathe in? Water or H20 is made up of hydrogen and oxygen. Look at the hydrogen both in the water and in you.
This hydrogen has been around since the beginning of time as we know it. At 13.8 billion years old, all of the hydrogen in the universe was created just moments after the Big Bang. Everything has an origin. At the core of every star, hydrogen drives nuclear reactions that propel the stars and supply our universe with light.
These nuclear reactions are responsible for almost every other element except helium, lithium, boron and beryllium. Boring old boron, a main component of borax soap, is created in the empty vacuum of space when a high-energy proton collides with a carbon or oxygen atom. Surprisingly exciting origins for a typical household cleaner.
The reaction, which ignites a star for the first time, fuses hydrogen into helium, releasing energy in the form of light. The light that warms your skin came from the core of the sun about 100,000 years ago before reaching the surface and eventually you. But what about the iron in your blood? Or the carbon in your DNA?
Driven by the intense heat and pressure in the stars, heavier elements melt together in chain reactions. The reactions that occur and the elements that are formed during the evolution of stars largely depend on the star’s mass. More massive stars can continue to fuse elements until their cores are mostly iron. At this point, fusion reactions are energetically costly because melting iron requires more energy than it generates. An iron core therefore means the beginning of the end for a star.
Elements beyond iron do not arise from this, but from the death of massive stars as supernovae, for example. In medium-sized stars like our Sun, an important element that is fused is carbon-12, a type of carbon that forms the backbone of our DNA. Carbon-12 is created by fusing two helium atoms to form a short-lived beryllium atom. The beryllium atom exists just long enough to fuse with another helium atom to form carbon-12.
All fusion reactions follow Einstein’s famous equation. In the case of carbon-12, the energy contained in the helium-beryllium combination is almost exactly that of an excited carbon-12 atom. This greatly increases the likelihood that this will happen. If it weren’t for that, carbon-12 would not be made in stars, and the element essential to life would not exist. The creation of carbon-12 is wonderful to me and now I hope you are too. In summary, we are not that different, us and stars. We’re all the same stuff, just arranged differently.
- Stephanie Monty is a PhD student in astrophysics at Mount Stromlo Observatory.
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