The universe had to make carbon before anything like me could exist, and for some reason that has been stuck in my head all day.
I obviously knew carbon was important for life. Carbon is in DNA, proteins, fats, sugars, basically all the important stuff that makes living things living things. But I never really stopped to think about where the carbon itself came from. I think I just treated the elements like they had always been here, like the periodic table was somehow part of the original setup.
It was not.
The early universe was mostly hydrogen and helium. Carbon came later, after stars started forming. Inside stars, lighter elements fuse together and eventually make heavier ones, including carbon. Then when stars lose material or die, those elements get thrown back out into space. That material can later become part of new stars, planets, and eventually living things.
So basically, there was a point when the universe did not have the ingredients for me yet. That is so weird to think about.
Like, before there could be DNA or trees or people or dogs or anything else that depends on carbon, stars had to exist first and actually make it. And then that material had to end up in the right place, Earth had to form, life had to somehow get started, evolution had to happen for an absurd amount of time, and eventually I showed up and started worrying about stupid things.
Very humbling.
I think what got me was realizing that the stuff making up my body is way older than I am. The carbon in my cells did not begin with me. Neither did the iron in my blood or the calcium in my bones. The atoms in my body have existed in other places and in other forms long before I was here, and one day they will keep existing after I am gone.
I do not mean that in a sad way. It actually makes me feel kind of normal about everything.
I spend so much time thinking about my life like it is this huge thing. What am I doing, am I behind, am I wasting time, am I making the right choices, do I look okay, did I say something weird, where am I going to be in five years. Meanwhile, the carbon atoms involved in this entire mental breakdown have been around for billions of years.
That makes me laugh.
It does not make my problems fake or unimportant. I would be very annoyed if I was upset and somebody told me, “remember, you are made of stardust.” Thanks. Very helpful. But I do think there is something nice about remembering that life is bigger than whatever is currently taking up my entire brain.
And carbon itself is not even that exciting when you look at it alone. It is literally just an element with six protons. But it is really good at bonding with other atoms, which is why it can be used to build so many different molecules. Somehow something that basic ends up being part of cells, brains, skin, hair, trees, bacteria, basically everything alive. That part is probably what I find the coolest.
The individual pieces are not alive, but put them together in the right way and somehow you get a living thing. Carbon does not think. Hydrogen does not have feelings. Oxygen is not stressed about its future. But arrange enough of this stuff correctly and suddenly there is a person sitting here thinking about where all of it came from.
I feel like science does this to me a lot. I learn something that sounds simple and then five minutes later I am having some unnecessary existential moment over it. I just wanted to know where carbon came from and now I am thinking about the fact that my body is basically made out of very old material temporarily arranged into me.
I actually like that way of thinking about it better than saying we are “made of stars.” That phrase sounds nice, but it has been repeated so much that I think I stopped hearing what it actually means. Some of the elements in us really were made inside stars. That is not a metaphor.
The universe had to go through all these steps before something like me was even chemically possible. There had to be stars. There had to be carbon. There had to be planets. There had to be life, and then billions of years of life doing whatever the hell it has been doing this whole time. And eventually, me.
Not because the universe was trying to make me. I do not think the stars were up there working overtime like, “we need to get Marianna here eventually.” I think that is what makes it cooler. None of it had to be about me for me to still be amazed that I got to exist at the end of it. Anyway, I now feel slightly guilty for ever calling carbon boring.
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