We are all made of stars

Nature also has a way of recycling the building blocks to create new life. A nuclear physicist named Paul Aebersold found that "we swap out half of our carbon atoms every one to two months, and we replace a full 98 percent of all our atoms every year," Levitt writes.

Like a house constantly under renovation, we are ever-changing and replacing old parts with new ones: our water, proteins and even cells, most of which we apparently replace every decade.

Eventually, our own cells will grow quiet, but their parts will reassemble into other forms of life. "Although we may die, our atoms don't," Levitt writes. "They revolve through life, soil, oceans, and sky in a chemical merry-go-round."

Just like the death of stars, in other words, our own destruction opens up another remarkable world of possibility.

We are all made of stars: The long trip from the big bang to the human body

By Bryn Nelson, CNN, January 22, 2023