For the second time in as many weeks an interesting person came to work to show us a world beyond our narrow ones. This time round it was an astronomer- the director of the
Palomar Observatory to be precise. This wonderful elf-like man named
Shrinivas Kulkarni stood up on stage and showed us worlds that one would think were the stuff of our wildest imaginings.
One of the things he said that grabbed hold of me and hasn't let me go was about how the universe is a destructive place but also, how that destruction is necessary to maintain us as us. Through a wonderful alchemy or perhaps just as magical physics , the destruction of a star is what releases the iron that constitutes our blood. It amazes me that it takes an explosive instability to create whatever it is that makes us relatively stable as humans. And not just iron. But every stable element that constitutes the human body.
There is stardust in each of us.
I have been long since convinced that our entire existence is tied in with the world around us. The
Gaia Theory hypothesizes just such an interconnectedness.
