Are We Really Stardust? (on grade)_02

You hear your mother coming in the backdoor. You yell out “Good morning, Mom.” “Good morning, Stardust,” she yells back as you hear the door close. Your father has already left for work as he likes to get an early start at his job. Your Mom normally works during the day at the nearby university, but sometimes she scores some time on the university’s large optical telescope.

When this happens, she becomes a night-owl, starting work when the stars come out. That is the life of an astrophysicist. Astrophysicists study the physical and chemical nature of astronomical objects, such as stars. This is slightly different from an astronomer that is more interested in the positions or motions of objects in space. Your Mom’s work specializes in supernovae, a fancy word for exploding stars. Your nickname, Stardust, comes from her work. Since you were young enough to remember, she has called you her special Stardust.

At first glance it would not appear that you and the stars in the sky have much in common. The human body is comprised of an assortment of parts such as a head, neck, trunk, arms and hands, legs, and feet. Inside the body there is a skeleton that provides support. There are organs such as the heart, brain, stomach, and liver all having a purpose to sustain life. The body itself is made of many kinds of cells. Cells are the building blocks of all living organisms. Stars, on the other hand do not look at all like a human body.

A star is a giant ball of hot gas, held together by its own gravity. The gravity is so strong due to a star’s mass that it can squeeze atoms so tightly together that nuclear fusion occurs. In stars like our Sun, an averaged size star, hydrogen atoms are squeezed (or fused) together to create a helium atom. During this fusion process, a tremendous amount of energy is released. This fusion process is also what makes stars visible to the naked eye, even though they may be many light years away from Earth. How can a human body, made of cells, have anything to do with stars, that are made of atomic elements? To learn the answer, it is first necessary to find out more about these elements that make up stars.