Why must the material composing our structure, like iron and calcium, have been recycled across multiple stellar generations?
Answer
The Sun is only old enough to have created elements up to iron, but bones require calcium, demanding more massive stars that burned out quickly.
The Sun is only capable of creating elements up to iron. Elements like calcium, required for bones, demand the lifecycle of larger, faster-burning stars that lived and died before the Sun ignited, necessitating prior recycling.
Related Questions
What term is considered scientifically more precise than "stardust" when describing the fundamental atomic materials making up human bodies?What elements were overwhelmingly composed of the initial material resulting from Big Bang nucleosynthesis?What is the hard stop for the fusion process within a star's core before gravitational collapse due to energy consumption?Which elements crucial to biology, such as gold and platinum, are forged during the explosive death of a massive star?What process is responsible for creating roughly half of the elements heavier than iron, including iodine necessary for human metabolism?What percentage of all cosmic dust, as defined in astrophysics, is directly created by stars?What percentage of the human body's mass is accounted for by Oxygen?What is the approximate mass percentage contribution of Hydrogen to the human body?What process is solely responsible for transmuting one element into another, such as oxygen into carbon, within a body?Why must the material composing our structure, like iron and calcium, have been recycled across multiple stellar generations?