Beginning of literally Everything

April, 2020

We are made of Star Stuff, you probably read or heard this line many times in your life but most of the time our brain assume it as a nice “Quote” to put under you FB or Instagram description post and never fully understand what it actually means or what are the thoughts that astronomers have when they listen the word “Star Stuff”.
To understand this let me tell you a story. It started way back …
Around 13.8 billion years ago, one big explosion take place somewhere. Let’s call it "Big Bang" and that explosion started throwing out matter and started expanding and expanding and Expanding …Even till now it’s expanding…

To understand star stuff we need to know what and how this star stuff come from, and the simple answer for this is it’s from that explosion (Big Bang) and but again How ?
So let me tell you event that happened after Big Bang that lead us to Star Stuff and Us.
Journey of 13.8 billion years
Let’s get back into time …

1. Planck Epoch

The first 5.39 x 10-44 seconds after the Big Bang – events (if any) occurring within this time must necessarily remain pure speculation. During the Planck epoch, cosmology and physics are assumed to have been dominated by the quantum effects of gravity

2. Grand Unification Epoch

The force of gravity separates from the other fundamental forces, and the first elementary particles are created. The three forces of the Standard Model are (Still)unified.

3. Inflationary Epoch

The universe undergoes an extremely rapid exponential expansion, known as cosmic inflation, and any existing particles become very thinly distributed. The universe is supercooled. The strong interaction becomes distinct from the electroweak interaction.

4. Electroweak Epoch

The strong nuclear force separates from the other two forces (electromagnetism and gravity), and particle interactions create large numbers of exotic particles, including W and Z bosons and Higgs bosons.

5. Quark Epoch

The four fundamental forces assume their present forms, and quarks, electrons and neutrinos form in large numbers as the universe cools off to below 10 quadrillion degrees (although most quarks and antiquarks annihilate each other upon contact, a surplus of quarks survives, which will ultimately combine to form matter).

6. Hadron Epoch

The universe cools to about a trillion degrees, allowing quarks to combine to form hadrons like protons and neutrons, and electrons colliding with protons fuse to form neutrons and give off massless neutrinos.

7. Lepton Epoch

Most (but not all) hadrons and antihadrons annihilate each other, and leptons such as electrons and positrons dominate the mass of the universe. Leptons and antileptons remain in thermal equilibrium.

8. Nucleosynthesis

The temperature of the universe falls to about a billion degrees, so that atomic nuclei can begin to form as protons and neutrons fuse to form the nuclei of the simple elements of hydrogen, helium and lithium.

9. Photon Epoch

The universe is filled with plasma, a hot opaque soup of atomic nuclei and electrons, and the energy of the universe is dominated by photons, which continue to interact frequently with the charged protons, electrons and nuclei.

10. Recombination/
Decoupling

The temperature of the universe falls to around 3,000 degrees, and ionized hydrogen and helium atoms capture electrons, neutralizing their electric charge and binding them within atoms; the universe finally becomes transparent to light, making this the earliest epoch potentially observable today. Electrons and atomic nuclei first become bound to form neutral atoms. Photons are no longer in thermal equilibrium with matter and the universe first becomes transparent. The baryonic matter density at this time is about 500 million hydrogen and helium atoms per m3, approximately a billion times higher than today.

11. Dark Age or Era

The universe is literally dark, with no stars having formed to give off light; only very diffuse matter remains, and all activity tails off dramatically, with the universe dominated by mysterious “dark matter”.

12. Reionization Epoch

The first quasars form from gravitational collapse, and their intense radiation reionizes the surrounding universe, which goes from being neutral back to being composed of ionized plasma

13. Star and Galaxy Formation

Small, dense clouds of cosmic gas start to collapse under their own gravity, until they trigger nuclear fusion reactions between hydrogen atoms and create the very first stars, which gradually cluster into galaxies.

14. Solar System Formation

Our Sun, a late-generation star incorporating the debris from generations of earlier stars, and the Solar System around it, form roughly 4.5 to 5 billion years ago.

So now that we reach till the formation of Solar System, Do you notice one thing, Our sun made up of debris from previous generation star so as earth and every living thing on earth. We are made up of same matter that is left by a dead star. So we can call our self ..Star Stuff ..OR Star Dust ..!!

Admin

We are result of 14 billion years evolution so act like it. You might now that Our universe is expanding at increasing rate but how we find out about that is story for another blog. I hope you get better idea about your existence now. If you have any question let me know at Instagram.