Cosmic Interconnection

Picture1.png    Human Elements.jpeg

The interconnectedness of all things continues this week with a fantastic visit to the UCLA Planetarium. I was able to learn more about the cosmos and participate in a meaningful meditation designed to boost the concept of planetary citizenship.

As we have learned, when it gets down to it humans are formed from the same elements that make up the cosmos. The stars in the sky are like factories that produce different elements through nuclear fusion and fission. These are the building blocks of everything in the universe. Living with the Stars: How the Human Body is Connected to the Life Cycles of the Earth, the Planets, and the Stars beautifully states the connection “Our bodies are made of the burned out embers of stars that were released into the galaxy in massive explosions billions of years ago, mixed with atoms that formed only recently as ultrafast rays slammed into Earth's atmosphere. All of that is not just remote history but part of us now: our human body is inseparable from nature all around us and intertwined with the history of the universe” 

Elements formation.jpeg

The significance of each planet, star, asteroid, meteorite, or piece of star dust to life is fundamentally related. While the lighter elements like helium and hydrogen were formed early in the creation of the universe through the big bang,  lithium and beryllium formed shortly after, it took about one hundred million years after the big bang for the process of star forming galaxies to begin. The development of stars led to the creation of other elements.

Human evolution only began around six million years ago, modern humans appearing just three hundred thousand years ago! It is a miniscule amount of time in the cosmic calendar. The sheer scale of the universe in time and size is unfathomable. In addition, modern science and the tools of electron microscopy, atomic force microscopes and laser scanning microscopes give us the ability to view connections between the universe and mankind on a massive adjusting scale from macro to micro, into cells, down to the nano scale.

stardust-infographic-two-column.jpg_.thumb_.768.768.jpg       

The majority of elements that form the human body were produced in stars               https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/are-we-really-made-of-stardust.html

These tools of microscopy not only reveal the make-up of the human body, but are utilized to examine the multitude of space debris and dust that can be found in our solar system. The study of meteors, comets, other space objects and even space dust provides vital information about the origins of life, the universe, and its formation. In 1999 a mission called Stardust, was the first mission to retrieve samples from a comet and deliver them back to earth! The study of these samples supported the process of establishing ways interstellar dust samples from earth deviate from the outer solar system matter. The study of space debris, lunar samples, and other material from specific solar system bodies is key to examining the past and preparing for the future.

This week we experienced [Alien] Star Dust an interactive installation that allowed us to participate in a meditation centered on peaceful coexistence, Professor Vesna explains her belief that star dust lands wherever it falls from and is not subject to borders. The meditation animated seven meteors that had each landed on a different continent. The audience hears amplified sounds of space and the verse was spoken in Russian, as we were envisioning and sending peace for the Russian and Ukrainian people. The  meditation is designed to elicit thoughts of being like the dust descending through the universe. It was a beautiful and artistic way to reinforce the idea of a universal citizenship. [Alien] Star Dust - Signal to Noise was a video tour of the installation at the Natural History Museum and discussed the collecting of (ordinary) dust from various sites throughout the world. In some of the samples they found micrometeorites, meaning extraterrestrial dust that came from outside our planetary system because everyday stardust is sprinkled over the earth!

Sources 

[Alien] Star Dust, https://alienstardust.com/ar/

Brownlee, Don. "The Stardust mission: analyzing samples from the edge of the solar system." Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences 42 (2014): 179-205.

Office, Eames. 1977. Powers of Ten. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fKBhvDjuy0.

Schrijver, Karel, and Schrijver, Iris. Living with the Stars: How the Human Body is Connected to the Life Cycles of the Earth, the Planets, and the Stars. United Kingdom, Oxford University Press, 2015.

Vesna, Victoria, interview by Dobrila Denegri. 2020. [Alien] Star Dust Arshake, (April 6). https://www.arshake.com/en/interview-victoria-vesna/.

Westphal, Andrew J., et al. "Evidence for interstellar origin of seven dust particles collected by the Stardust spacecraft." Science 345.6198 (2014): 786-791.