Well, this is actually a script I wrote for my public speaking course. It combines some information I learned from books and videos I encountered randomly. Enjoy!
---
Ever since human civilization begins, many great people asked about big questions. Among the popular ones, there is this question about “where do we all come from?”
Well, in religious point of will, we might answer it as “GOD created us.” But today, I’m going to share another view from another group of people, the group of scientist, physicist, mathematician, and astronomer about what they think about this question.
To start the story, we must go back to 13.7 billion years ago, to the moment of creation, the Big Bang. Until now, nobody was able to explain why or how it happens, but we know that it has happened before, and unimaginable amount of energy is released during the Big Bang.
Just like water vapor condenses into water, energies can condense into matter or atoms according to Einstein’s famous equation of E=mc2. At the moment of creation, it is mostly Hydrogen and Helium atoms are being created. The universe at that moment contains nothing more than dust clouds of Hydrogen and Helium.
Millions of years after the Big Bang, the universe has expanded large enough and cooled down, massive clouds of hydrogen grouped together by gravity, and it forms the first star. It does not happen in one place, but in almost anywhere in the universe!
Inside the stars, atoms of hydrogen are being squeezed and pushed together in the hot stars to form Helium atom, releasing nuclear fusion energy that we called sunlight.
If the star is hot enough, it can even start to cook heavier elements such as carbon – the element that all live on earth are based, oxygen – another essential part of living on earth, or iron – that builds up our house and machinery.
However, heavy elements such as gold are just too hard even for the biggest star in the known universe. But it doesn’t mean that it can’t be fused, just that it requires a very special condition – the supernova. Supernova happens when the star has run out of hydrogen fuel, and exploded in a massive blow. In other word, gold is only created during the death of a massive star.
After billions of years, the cycle of life and death has created enough heavy matter to forms planets, such as our own earth. Most of what we seen today, is actually cooked in the core of a massive star in the long past. Impressive isn’t it?
Next time, when someone asked you: “where do you come from?” You may answer them: “I’m born in earth, made from the star dust” or you could tell them: “You and I, are nothing but nuclear waste from the past”.
Thank you.
