I’ve posted the transcript for this video here:
Existence
2021-06-26
In 1963 a prominent and well-regarded American astronomer, Harlow Shapley, published a book titled The View from a Distant Star. The book’s first sentence reads: “Mankind is made of star-stuff, ruled by universal laws.” The second sentence continues: “The thread of cosmic evolution runs through his history, as through all phases of the universe….”
Stellar nucleosynthesis, the production of all atoms larger than hydrogen within stars, was first proposed in 1946 – long before I started taking chemistry in school. I took chemistry classes for eight years during my education without ever asking the obvious question: “Where did all these atoms come from?” I just accepted their presence and didn’t wonder about their origin. How incurious!
Nonetheless, I think the scientific discovery of stellar nucleosynthesis is one of the most fantastic and most intriguing human accomplishments of all time. It connects me, and you, boats and birds, and everything else, to each other and the whole universe.
In 2021 Alan Lightman, a physics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a bestselling author, explored our existence in his book of essays: Probable Impossibilities. In a chapter titled Immortality, he marvels at the generation of consciousness by the transmission of signals passed through trillions of connections between a hundred billion nerve cells in our brain. It is the flow of atoms and molecules between nerve cells doing the signaling and generating our sense of self and our thoughts.
Dr. Lightman breaks down our bodies into their atomic components as follows: “…the average human being consists of about seven thousand trillion trillion atoms –– 65% oxygen, 18% carbon, 10% hydrogen, 3% nitrogen, 1.4% calcium, 1.1% phosphorous, and a smattering of 54 other chemical elements.” This atomic recipe adds considerable detail to Dr. Shapley’s assertion that “we are made of star-stuff.” And recognize that the nerve cells in our brain signaling each other with atomic messengers are themselves made of atoms. Human beings are a highly organized collection of atoms made in stars billions of years ago; when we die, these atoms disperse and become part of other things, including other people. A potassium atom that once shuttled back and forth across a nerve cell membrane sending messages –– thoughts –– through our brains will become part of something else, maybe a rock or a butterfly, without any ability to understand, to know, that it was once part of us. Dr. Lightman expresses the feeling of some comfort in knowing that his atoms will persist after he is gone, thereby granting him a kind of immortality.
I accept my transient nature. I am grateful for the unlikely chance I’ve got to live a conscious life in which I am aware of my existence, and I can learn about things like stellar nucleosynthesis and my connection to the whole universe across the immensity of time.
Monte