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Alex by putting together this comparison it made it far clearer to me exactly what we are looking at even if it was only a size consideration.
We and everything around us are all made from the stuff of these gaseous dusty nebulae. They all produce new stars with planets and then inevitably life. They themselves are the product of countless supernovae and many generations of stars.
Never mind genealogy we can see and now understand what makes us.
It was within my lifetime that nuclear synthesis in stars was first understood by Hoyle. As was the production of elements with a greater atomic number than Iron 56. These can only be produced in a supernova.
We now can manipulate at will the molecules that make all life on this planet. This has happened in just the last twenty years.
We are a bit further from when we crawled out of the primeval ooze.
Bert
Last edited by avandonk; 01-01-2010 at 12:36 PM.
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