Tonight, I enjoyed a glass of cool water with my dinner. Every kid knows the formula for the liquid of life: H2O. Hydrogen plus oxygen. Hydrogen is ancient, ancient stuff.
About 300,000 years after the Big Bang, protons cobbled together from quarks began to snag electrons and hydrogen was born, joining helium in the universe.
Our sun is mainly composed of these two elements.
With the proper equipment, a scientist could take my glass of drinking water and separate the hydrogen and oxygen. The hydrogen gas would float freely again as it had in those earliest days of the universe, long before it married oxygen to form "water."
Because we living things are mostly water -- from a gooey jellyfish to a beautiful Woman, we transport this ancient element, this stuff of the stars, around with us everywhere we go.
Monday, August 27, 2007
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4 comments:
Well, You are the scientist, Adena, I'm just a curious amateur. I'm learning this fascinating stuff from a book by Dr. Ronald Bonewitz (that's his name, dead serious)and he awards primacy to helium.
Great Stuff
and I have long long been a fan of Carl Sagan
“We are a way for the cosmos to know itself”
"For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring."
"The brain is like a muscle. When it is in use we feel very good. Understanding is joyous."
and we are of the stars ourselves... the elements
that form our being were first concocted in the depths and hearts of the stars themselves
Water is indeed the source of life. And of beer.
V.
What a great way to look at water. Sweet to think we carry the stuff of the universe within us and that we're made up of it.
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