7 Octillion Atoms, An Exploding Star And Empty Space

7,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (7 Octillion) atoms   

zip around in your body

making up 

you.

7,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 atoms,

all of them with a nucleus at the center—the atoms ‘sun’,

with several electrons orbiting it—the atoms ‘planets’;

the atom mimics our solar system;

or,

our solar system mimics the atom.

Which one came first again? I forget . . .

And those 7,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 atoms that presently make up your idea of your ‘self’ as you read these words,

they came from an exploding star.

Except for some hydrogen, helium and lithium atoms, which have supposedly existed since the Big Bang, all elements come from dead stars. 

You split one of these tiny atoms and a tremendous amount of energy is released as heat and radiation, and several new neutrons are ejected from the split atom. These newly released neutrons can go on to hit other nearby atoms, causing them to split, creating a chain reaction that releases continuous energy. 

You’ve heard of nuclear bombs, haven’t you? Good ol America dropped a few of those 70ish years ago, remember? And you’ve heard of nuclear fusion? Well, splitting an ity bity atom is how you get them. Pretty trippy, right? Something so small can create something so massive. Something so destructive could potentially provide clean energy to us all. 

Splitting an atom at its core—the nucleus—unlocks the powerful forces holding its nucleus together, converting mass into energy and creating new elements. Remember this for a moment or two before your attention span craps out. 

Guess what happens when a star explodes? . . . Do you already know? Shit, I forgot the details. And it was only a month ago that I wrote about it . . .   

Oh yeah! Almost every star exists in a delicate balance between gravity, which tries to collapse the star toward its center, and on the other side, the fusion process, (the same fusion process mentioned above with the ity bity atom and its nucleus) which produces enough energy to try to expand from the center of the star outwards. 

Guess what happens when you mess with a star's nucleus core? Bingo. You get a Supernova.  After a sudden collapsing phase—which has something to do with the lighter elements (Helium and Hydrogen) being used up, creating a disturbance in that delicate balance between gravity and fusion—a huge explosion happens, which releases more energy in a short period of time than a whole parent galaxy. Think of it like a massive shockwave that blasts the outer layer of the star out into space, creating new elements, and enriches our universe with heavy metals, while the core of the star leaves behind a black hole, which I guess ‘seeds’ new star formations. 

These Supernova explosions outshine entire galaxies, while also providing  the ‘building blocks’ for future planets and life. 

The atom exploding on the quantum scale sounds strangely like what happens when the star explodes on the macro scale to me, but I’ve been told this is a misconception . . . Is it, though?

Look within, and see everything. Look out, and see everything. And it all repeats. It’s all a mirror. You are the universe experiencing itself. 

Almost everything that makes you up 

came from that exploding star,

but here's something to fuck with your mind a little,

the thing that makes up most of your physical body

is 

space.

There is so much empty space between the nucleus and the electron. They say %99.99999999 of the volume of the human body is empty, because the atoms that make us up are mostly vacuum.  

There is so much empty space inside of you.

I wonder what you'll fill it up with . . .

Maybe you'll fill up your empty space with: 

Love

or music

or passion

or joy

or wisdom 

or knowledge.

But,

maybe you'll fill it up with 

greed

or lust 

or selfishness 

or vanity 

or you’ll do what most people do,

and fill up your space with fear. 

Once you realize what you are made of,

and how much empty space you have,

you can transform 

and become more

then just a dying star trapped in a suit of skin, pushing the wheel, doing just enough to pay the bills. 

We came from an exploding star,

filled with atoms that mimic miniature solar systems,

yet,

somehow, 

we are all empty. 

How fishy. 

You and I are empty. 

. . . How fishy.

CH 1/26/26