BAN #331: Just passing through

[The planetary nebula M 2-9, winds from a dying star. Credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble Legacy Archive / Judy Schmidt]

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Blog Jam

What I’ve recently written on the blog, ICYMI

[The Stingray Nebula has faded considerably over the past decade, as shown by Hubble images. From Thursday’s article. Credit: NASA, ESA, B. Balick (University of Washington), M. Guerrero (Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía), and G. Ramos-Larios (Universidad de Guadalajara)]

Monday 14 June, 2021: The first lone neutron star ever seen outside the Milky Way

Tuesday 15 June, 2021: A hidden planet reveals itself by yanking on its neighbor

Wednesday 16 June, 2021: Chinese radio telescope finds hundreds of new pulsars

Thursday 17 June, 2021: The rise and rapid fall of the Stingray Nebula

Friday 18 June, 2021: NGC 4394: A gorgeous galaxy with a built-in bar

Random Thoughts

Stuff I think about in the shower, typically

Just a thought.

The atoms in your body were once energy in the Big Bang, then fundamental subatomic particles, then composite subatomic particles (like neutrons and protons, which are made of quarks), then funneled by dark matter into a primordial protogalaxy, then aggregated into gas clouds, some of which then collapsed into a massive star, then built up into heavier elements, then blasted out into space when that star went supernova, then fell into another gas cloud, then collapsed into another star, and then perhaps blasted out by a supernova once or twice or four times more before falling into a gas cloud that already had many of your atoms in it, which then collapsed to form the Sun, then falling into a disk around the Sun, then collected into trillions of different planetesimals, then aggregated into the Earth, some going into the crust and some into the mantle which eventually volcanically erupted onto the crust, then becoming part of the rocks and the eventual ocean, then the air and countless plants and animals and people and then, finally, you.

But they’re not done. They'll be part of countless people more, maybe even eventually leaving Earth and going to other worlds, or blown by the solar wind into space, and who knows where they will be in a trillion years, or a trillion trillion trillion years.

You think that's your body? Those atoms are just passing through, pausing momentarily on a trip that’s been 13.8 billion years long and is just getting started.

Et alia

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