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Science Memes @mander.xyz

fossilesque @mander.xyz

6mo ago

We are stardust.

28 comments

Elemental iron is star poison.
- \m/

- Incorrect, the hydrogen is mostly from the big bang. Not to mention that neutron star mergers produced a while lot of the heavier stuff.
  
  If that hydrogen was previously incorporated in a star, I think it's fair to call it stardust. That's very likely, since our solar system would have formed from a relatively dense cloud of the remnants of earlier stars, with just a smidge of primordial hydrogen mixed in.
  
  I also like the science behind particles like neutrinos blasting their way through everything in space and matter, even through our own bodies and cells. Every once in a while, one of those tiny particles hits a piece of DNA at just the right spot to cause a chain reaction that leads to a new minor or major mutation in the next generation. It's generally thought that this kind of physics is one of forces that drive evolution of all lifeforms on our planet.
  We are made of star stuff ..... and we are and will always be affected by star energy.
- JFC

There's stardust all over my basement walls 😌
- Stardust got everywhere...

Wait till this person finds out about basically every other element they're made of
- This made me look up what the actual ratios of elemental composition in the human body are, and I learned we're 67% oxygen by atomic mass, which makes sense, with only 9.5% hydrogen, but I still find that idea that we're mostly oxygen oddly upsetting.

We are stardust, we are golden, we are billion year old carbon, and we've got to get ourselves back to the garden.
Joni Mitchell

dont tell emos that there is a dead star inside them, they are already having a difficult time as is

Shit, dude. My iron was at 2 after my last blood test. They keep pumping me full of star stuff--pow, straight in the veins--and I just keep burning through it. Why, stars, why! Why does thou forsake me! I am very tired, stars.
- And probably cold, too.

I've heard this so many fucking times I want to blow up the sun so I never have to hear it again.

I learned this from Professor Moby.

"in the highest exalted way"
https://yewtu.be/watch?v=8g4d-rnhuSg

i remember hearing that this was an ancient native american lesson long before it was understood by science. how they could have known this? are they a remnant of a previously more developed society?
- Tell Lemmy you're high as balls without saying you're high as balls.
  
  but aztec
- They probably meant something entirely different - as in not so much that we are literally made of elemental materials forged in a burning sphere in space (a "reductionist" viewpoint) but rather than we contain an "aspect" of star-stuff, i.e. we may be animals that come from the earth, but we also contain within us an aspect of even the stars (more "holistic"?).
  And perhaps beyond, if you believe that aspects of our Minds transcend physical reality itself - e.g. if we were a computer game but like, we could have been talking butterflies rather than talking apes, yet we were modelled after a "higher" world, to have five fingers on each hand and to be able to write our own stories, even make our own computer simulations "below" us.
  Anyway there is no need to presume that they would have meant it in such an extremely literal manner as is common today.

28 comments