ELEMENTS IN SPACE AND EARTH
Rex Burress
People on Earth, or at least part of them, are focused on NASA's Juno as the spacecraft orbits planet Jupiter after arriving there July 4, 2016.
Imagine! Juno charged through space--merely in our solar system of our Milky Way galaxy--at 150,000 miles per hour for FIVE YEARS before slipping into its orbit ONE SECOND off of the projected arrival! Think of that and the sophisticated calculations involved! 1.8 billion miles and 1.1 billion dollars!
As colossal as the space travel story is, equally fascinating is the presence of the same elements throughout the universe as discovered by scientists ! Think of it: There are a known 98 natural elements composing everything in the universe...as far as we know! Or at least, the 98 natural elements on earth have been found elsewhere in the universe. How can you word that to reflect the wonder of creation?
Realistically, elements can combine to make a compound, such as oxygen and hydrogen together make water. There are countless possibilities of elemental atoms combining to make various compounds, or the 'stuff of the worlds.' Carl Sagan said, “We are all made of star-stuff,” just as Bob King spoke of “Nature uses the same 98 natural elements to fashion everything from stars and planets to those in the farthest galaxies that we can see.” On Earth, 20 additional elements have been made in the laboratory, but they are so heavy they rapidly undergo radioactive decay. Such elements may be produced in space, too.
Science has put together a mass of information about the composition of the universe, but the amateur can wade around in that morass becoming more confused. It takes interpreters with a knack for breaking down technical data into common sense statements to straighten us out on the road to understanding! My astronomy gifted son, Ben Burress, has that knack, emphasized in his regular cosmos blog for KQED's science program in the Bay Area. He composes articles from his work base at the Chabot Space and Science Center in Oakland, and has added material for this article.
Ben wrote; “As for the elements—yes, we find the same stuff everywhere in the universe, from right here on Earth to the Sun to other planets and to other distant galaxies...and no, there don't seem to be elements that exist on a distant star or galaxy that aren't found in our own solar system...”
With volumes of astronomical articulations left unsaid, the simple encounter of a scrub jay along the Feather River in Oroville, California on planet Earth, is the end result of elements working together to present the visual joy of seeing a bird! The scrub jay compounds could be the same in some other galaxy at an unfathomable distance on the other side of the universe if conditions were right to produce a scrub jay and a scrub jay habitat.
Along the river I see the water fall over the fish barrier dam, cascading over the precipice with a musical rhythm like a classical song being sung to an admiring audience, and I know in part the scene is illusionary—a bunch of oxygen and hydrogen elements seeking a way out of the merciless pull of gravity trying to complete the journey to the sea. Yet, it is tangible enough to present a picture of soothing sounds and peaceful dependency from which we can take joy.
Then there are the rocks. Like the water, they are bunches of compound elements driven to piles in the gravel bars awaiting further distribution [except some like gold are a single element]. But they linger long into the future, offering their stony gleam of color and shape to those who would see them. “...Little drops of water, little grains of sand/Make the mighty ocean, make the mighty land...” “To those who in the love of nature hold communion with her visible forms, she speaks a various language...” Elements all!
“Bears are made of the same dust as we, and breathe the same winds and drink of the same waters. A bear's days are warmed by the same sun, his dwellings are overdomed by the same blue sky, and his life turns and ebbs with heart-pulsings like ours; and was poured from the same First Fountain. And whether he at last goes to our stingy heaven or no, he has terrestrial immortality. --John Muir
“Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known...Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence...The beauty of a living thing is not the atoms that go into it, but the way those atoms are put together.”
--Carl Sagan