WHY WE’RE MADE OF STARDUST
Human beings – and everything else – are made from recycled elements that came from stars
WORDS ANDREW MAY
DID YOU KNOW? In 1929, a newspaper quoted astronomer Harlow Shapley as saying: “We are made of the same stuff as the stars”
You may have heard people say that human beings are ‘made from
stardust’, perhaps with vaguely mystical overtones suggesting that this makes us unique or special in some way. But there’s another perfectly scientific sense in which we really are made up of material from the stars – but this doesn’t mean we’re special or unique at all.