The Heat of the Moment - Global Warming and Fire Adaptation in South African National Environment Month - Part 4

If you go back far enough, the story of biodiversity is also the story of astronomy. In the early universe, only the light elements such as hydrogen and helium existed. Through immense heat and pressure, the heavier elements that make up organic life - namely carbon, oxygen, calcium, iron, and many others - were forged deep within ancient stars; enriched minerals and elements that scattered across the cosmos when some of these stars exploded in spectacular supernovae. Over billions of years, this stellar material became part of new stars, planets, rocks, and oceans - establishing geology. Geology became soil. Simple organic compounds gradually increased in complexity through chemical reactions, eventually forming the first self-replicating cells - a process known as abiogenesis. Soil became plants. Plants became ecosystems. And then: ecosystems bore fauna and people. The calcium in your bones, the iron in your blood, the oxygen you breathe, and the carbon that forms every cell in your body were created inside stars long before the Earth existed. We are all made of stardust - one moment in a chain that began in stellar fire billions of years ago and, in a sense, we are the universe looking back on itself.