We are all made of stars. Back when the universe was young, only the two lightest elements existed: hydrogen and helium. These elements existed in the sticky, hot cores of the billions of stars that made up our universe. A star is constantly waging an internal war on itself — between the gravity trying to collapse it and the light (yes, the light) trying to expand it. All along, the hydrogen and helium on the inside of the star are literally burning to keep the star alive. Once all the hydrogen burns out, gravity wins and the star collapses, exerting such an enormous amount of pressure that the elements inside it will fuse and create a new, heavier element. Trillions of stars lived, burned and died to create the letters that spell out our universe.
Then the elements started to combine in ways that shaped the beginning of life. Carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen and oxygen came together to form carboxyl and amino groups, amino acids, then peptide chains, then proteins — the building blocks of life. Two hydrogens and an oxygen found each other and created water — the substance in which all life was first formed. Then genetic mutations shaped that life and 4.5 billion years later we have art, music, American Idol, air conditioning, a fantastic football team and an endless catalog of knowledge about how the world works. And every element we know today was born in a dying star.
I don’t remember exactly where or when I learned about stars, but I remember an incredible sense of unity with the universe. I realized that science is the connection between humans (who love to think they’re different) and the world we inhabit. When you really think about it, almost every living thing has two eyes, two ears, a nose, a mouth, a heart, blood, a stomach (or four) and limbs. Some have wings, some have claws, some have teeth that regenerate, some photosynthesize and some eat rocks. But then I read that dolphins have language and pigs have sex for more than procreation, and I thought, gee, we can’t be that different.
Even if you never attend a biology class or never watch Discovery Channel or never read National Geographic, science is an integral part of your life, whether you like it or not. Consider your Saturday morning — you’ve been lying in bed for as long as possible, but have to get up because the aching in your stomach is just too painful to ignore. The first bite of your breakfast, whether it is cornflakes or a gourmet omelet, tastes like heaven. The enhanced taste is a result of the neurotransmitter dopamine and the reward center of your brain. Your body was displaying signs of hunger and you rewarded it with food, which causes a Noah’s Ark-caliber flood of dopamine to be released in your brain, resulting in the food tasting 10 times better than usual. All day long you encounter and use science — you touch, taste, feel, see, hear and your brain puts this mass of information together so that it all makes sense. You inhale oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide, which is inhaled by plants, which go through photosynthesis and exhale oxygen for us to breathe.
Without science in my life, I would be nowhere. I would be staring at the ice in my glass of water and thinking: “Wait, if ice is a solid, why does it float?” (Answer: Because there’s air trapped in the ice, it’s less dense than water). Without science I would still be wondering why it’s easier to turn a page if you lick your finger first (hydrogen bonds!) or why there are tides (the moon and sun’s gravity pulling on the Earth).
Because of science I could tell you why heat makes water boil and how cave lizards lost their eyes. In this day and age, you can take a swab of your cheek and have your entire genome sequenced, and then you can find out that you’re genetically 99 percent the same as a banana.
My good friend Suzanne, a sophomore and chemistry major, put it better than I could have in a million years: Life, social and physical sciences, unlike any other area of study, are not just “rediscovering” or “reinterpreting” what we already know, they’re an “area of expanding knowledge” about the world around us. We need that knowledge to be a part of this world, to be connected to everything in it. We are the descendants of trillions of stars and it is because of science that we know this.
As They Might Be Giants said in their song Roy G. Biv, “You’ll never see a unicorn, but you’ll see a rainbow.” After a long rain, sunlight can hit suspended water droplets at such a perfect angle that the light is refracted, split into the hundreds of colors in the spectrum and displayed across the sky for us to see, to enjoy, to celebrate. If that’s not a miracle, I don’t know what is.
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Wendel: Science connects humans, world
Daily Emerald
October 11, 2010
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