The universe will find a way

Scientists recently discovered two galaxies perched on the edge of time. One was born 350 million years after the Big Bang — the primordial state of high density and temperature which began stretching over the next 14 billion years, continuing into our ever-expanding cosmos today. The other galaxy formed just 290 million years after this epochal event — for comparison, our own Earth is 4.5 billion years old. A galaxy, a clutch of stars, which formed so soon after the Big Bang would have been an extraordinary opening note in the grand song of time.
Why, some might ask, do we need to know this? The answer is elementary, dear TE reader — you are this cosmos. Your every atom comes from these celestial bodies. The first generation of stars formed after the Big Bang, clumps of gas combining and combusting, this nucleosynthesis creating the elements. When these stars exploded in supernovas, they expelled the elements into space, producing matter for the next generation of stars to form, burn and explode.

This alchemy of galactic chemical evolution — each element coming from a star, combinations of these then creating gases, minerals, asteroids, planets, water and air — made the atoms that form us. Every living being has thus travelled 14 billion years over time and timelessness to reach the one place where all that is needed for life — air, water, soil, trees, microorganisms and a warming sun — united. Thus, you are truly miraculous, every fibre of your being having descended from space to the universe’s only known hospitable home. There is literally no end to this amazing story for as each living being perishes, it returns these atoms to the environment, as material for new life.
Today, in the Anthropocene, it is crucial we renew our admiration for this fact. Many imagine Earth as just a place to plunder and pollute. Few consider the impacts of our behaviour on such huge, intricately linked systems. More need to care for Earth which, as Carl Sagan describes so movingly in ‘Cosmos’, is our parent. Our appreciation or destruction of it will be profound, not just for this planet but for this mighty experiment of space, time and being. Join Times Evoke in learning about our stellar lives for knowledge, as TE’s global experts emphasise, can awaken us to our cosmic responsibilities as children of stars and siblings of all lives. Once that happens, to keep this unique planet proliferating, the universe will — again — find a way.