(Originally posted on Facebook Mar 9, 2007)
For those of you that don't know, I am not much of a jewelry person. I like it on other people, but I don't like adorning myself very much. I do have one piece of jewelry I like to wear. I usually don't take it off, even when I sleep. It might sound a little weird but I almost feel naked if I don't have it on my neck. The story of how this necklace came to rest around my neck is an interesting story, at least I think so, that spans both time and lots of space.
Around 13.7 billion years ago (or a couple thousand, whichever works for you (heh, zing bitches!)) a mass that was infinitly small and infinitly dense; something we like to call a singulartiy. This singularity eventually grew tired of being what it was for some reason or another and began to expand outward at an alarming rate. Shortly after this, the matter that came out of it, mostly hydrogen, electrons, protons, neutrons, and some quarks thrown in for fun, began to be drawn to each other by gravity. The more material that gathered together, the larger the gravity force became and more material was drawn into this mass.
Over time, enough hydrogen clumped together and the hydrogen at the center of this mass became crushed together from all the weight above it and formed helium. This simplified reaction, called fusion, produces tremendous amounts of heat and radiation and is the basis for why the sun shines. As the sun goes through its 10 billion year(give or take) life span the matter in the center is kept under heavy pressure. This pressure adds new parts to the atoms turning them into different heavier atoms. This eventually results into an iron core in the star.
Other atoms result from this as well. Every once in a great while a gold atom forms in the center. If you must know, there is about 1 gold atom for every million or so iron atoms. Once the star's life cycle is up and it runs of of hydrogen to fuse, the star expands into an enourmous red giant. To give you an idea of how big they get, when our sun dies it will expand out far enough to where it will consume Mars, the planet right after us. Most of the time the star fizzles out and becomes a hunk of mostly iron floating around space. But if the star is big enough something else happens...
After the star has expanded to a red giant, the core cools faster than the outside and it begins to collapse on itself. As the outside races toward the center it gains heat. This makes a fusion chain reaction which causes the star to explode with more brightness than an entire galaxy. This spews all of the atoms it fused together, including the gold, across the galaxy in a hellstorm of cosmic fury vaporizing anything it comes into contact with.
Eventually, this matter will condense into another star. The leftover material will begin to clump up on its own to form a planet, while still attracted to the larger mass of the sun, and begin orbiting the new star. Mixed in with this leftover material was a few tiny gold atoms. This gold lied in wait inside the planet for a few billion years until it was stumbled upon by a wandering human. This man thought, "I like the look of this stuff, let us use it as money," and so it was. Over the years, gold was exchanged for other goods and then became popular to wear as decoration.
Then, a few trillion of these gold atoms were brought together to form a a series of concentric, interlocking circles by some douche who wanted to make money to buy his girlfriend a tightly compacted piece of carbon that she will not think is good enough for her.
But anyway, I digress, these circles form the very chain that goes around my neck. That is why I feel it is special, it is a little piece of the history of universe around my neck. It has traveled billions of years and who knows how many miles to arrive here, on my neck.
If you think about it, everything you are made of, except hydrogen, has come from these firey cataclysms. I'm not trying to freak you out or anything by saying that, it is just that these are the kind of things I like to think about. I also think that this is about it for me. Until I speak with you next, have a nice vacation, I know I will.
---Seth
For those of you that don't know, I am not much of a jewelry person. I like it on other people, but I don't like adorning myself very much. I do have one piece of jewelry I like to wear. I usually don't take it off, even when I sleep. It might sound a little weird but I almost feel naked if I don't have it on my neck. The story of how this necklace came to rest around my neck is an interesting story, at least I think so, that spans both time and lots of space.
Around 13.7 billion years ago (or a couple thousand, whichever works for you (heh, zing bitches!)) a mass that was infinitly small and infinitly dense; something we like to call a singulartiy. This singularity eventually grew tired of being what it was for some reason or another and began to expand outward at an alarming rate. Shortly after this, the matter that came out of it, mostly hydrogen, electrons, protons, neutrons, and some quarks thrown in for fun, began to be drawn to each other by gravity. The more material that gathered together, the larger the gravity force became and more material was drawn into this mass.
Over time, enough hydrogen clumped together and the hydrogen at the center of this mass became crushed together from all the weight above it and formed helium. This simplified reaction, called fusion, produces tremendous amounts of heat and radiation and is the basis for why the sun shines. As the sun goes through its 10 billion year(give or take) life span the matter in the center is kept under heavy pressure. This pressure adds new parts to the atoms turning them into different heavier atoms. This eventually results into an iron core in the star.
Other atoms result from this as well. Every once in a great while a gold atom forms in the center. If you must know, there is about 1 gold atom for every million or so iron atoms. Once the star's life cycle is up and it runs of of hydrogen to fuse, the star expands into an enourmous red giant. To give you an idea of how big they get, when our sun dies it will expand out far enough to where it will consume Mars, the planet right after us. Most of the time the star fizzles out and becomes a hunk of mostly iron floating around space. But if the star is big enough something else happens...
After the star has expanded to a red giant, the core cools faster than the outside and it begins to collapse on itself. As the outside races toward the center it gains heat. This makes a fusion chain reaction which causes the star to explode with more brightness than an entire galaxy. This spews all of the atoms it fused together, including the gold, across the galaxy in a hellstorm of cosmic fury vaporizing anything it comes into contact with.
Eventually, this matter will condense into another star. The leftover material will begin to clump up on its own to form a planet, while still attracted to the larger mass of the sun, and begin orbiting the new star. Mixed in with this leftover material was a few tiny gold atoms. This gold lied in wait inside the planet for a few billion years until it was stumbled upon by a wandering human. This man thought, "I like the look of this stuff, let us use it as money," and so it was. Over the years, gold was exchanged for other goods and then became popular to wear as decoration.
Then, a few trillion of these gold atoms were brought together to form a a series of concentric, interlocking circles by some douche who wanted to make money to buy his girlfriend a tightly compacted piece of carbon that she will not think is good enough for her.
But anyway, I digress, these circles form the very chain that goes around my neck. That is why I feel it is special, it is a little piece of the history of universe around my neck. It has traveled billions of years and who knows how many miles to arrive here, on my neck.
If you think about it, everything you are made of, except hydrogen, has come from these firey cataclysms. I'm not trying to freak you out or anything by saying that, it is just that these are the kind of things I like to think about. I also think that this is about it for me. Until I speak with you next, have a nice vacation, I know I will.
---Seth
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