Why Alchemy?

Alchemy is one of the oldest somewhat scientific approach through which people have tried to make gold from different methods. But with all the technological advancements we still have not been able to make fundamental elements artificially.

The periodic table have a number of elements that have been discovered over the years. The first 94 elements are from Hydrogen to Plutonium are found in nature, some are found in traces and rest from 95 to 118 are synthesized in labs, nuclear reactors or nuclear explosions. 

The question that I have been thinking was where did these elements come from and when much of it are naturally occurring and none of these are easily manufactured in laboratory. Like people have tried to add one proton to Platinum or by taking one proton out of Mercury to make gold. But it has not been commercially successful and process makes the end result radioactive.  This process is simple in principle but hard in practice as there is no chemical process but a nuclear reaction that can add or substract proton from the nucleus.

What this has do with Big Bang and Death of Stars?

Here is table that shows how Elements got created. Hydrogen and Helium was entirely generated during the Big Bang and these are elements that fills the universe. As per the current evaluation 73% of all the material of the universe is Hydrogen atoms and another 25% is the Helium atoms. Around 2% is what everything else accounts for. Though there is another estimate that only 12% is made of Atoms whereas about 72% is made up of less understood stuff called “dark matter”.    

Scientists are always in the lookout for stars, supernovae, cosmic rays in order to discover more about the creation of various elements. The stars are more like the nuclear furnace where the nuclear reactions takes places making the heavier elements by the process of fusion. Almost all elements are created by some nuclear reactions that needs high amounts of energy. So everything our Earth has come from the years when there was Big Bang, stars dying out and blowing up, supernovae and cosmic rays probably before any life existed as we know it. 

Now since in the vast expanse of universes these kind of processes are continuing, it is very difficult to take that there is only one Earth like planet that has managed to sustain life. As there are more advances we would find life that is out there probably in different forms, evolved from a tree that is not ours. There is already water vapor identified on the Jupiter’s Icy Moon Gandymede that can harbor life or the volcanic satellite Io may have something that we call life. We will know when we reach there maybe in coming times, less likely in our lifetime though 🙂

What do you think Humans are made of?

Everything on Earth is made of these different elements that were delivered on our planet by stars or something similar. Humans interestingly are also made of all of these and Royal Society of Chemistry has tried to estimate that d Bill Bryson in his book “The Body” had cited. Lets look at it now.

According to RSC calculations 59 elements are needed to construct a human being. 99.1% of us is six elements that are  carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, calcium and phosphorus. 

Here is a list with percentages of human mass (source: Wikipedia) 

Oxygen – 65% , Carbon-18%, Hydrogen – 10%, Nitrogen – 3.2%, Calcium – 1.5%, Phosphorus – 1%, Potassium – 0.4%, Sulphur – 0.3%, Sodium – 0.2%, Chlorine – 0.2%, Magnesium – 0.1% and all others are less than 0.1%. 

The rest is of elements that are needed in very small quantities and some are exotic and are not known why they are present like Barium, Cerium, Uranium, Bismuth, Zirconium and so on.

Now it is possible to buy all of these as raw materials and its been estimated that to make someone like Benedict Cumberbatch (Famous for portraying as Sherlock Holmes). We would need about about 1 Crore (Only BoM Cost, no Value add included) in Indian rupees with current Pound Sterling conversion of 103.42 INR for single Pound. Sure Cumberbatch is one of a kind, even common people like us would estimate around the same is my guess. So god or nature sends us as a “Crorepati” already just that we never realize the value 🙂 

And it probably never matter that one is men or woman, which race you belong, which caste you belong, you are pure blooded or something else. Humans are constituted with the same raw materials programmed through evolutionary process over billions of years after which we find amazing end products – hands, eyes, brain, nerves, heart, blood, blood vessels and so many more. 

I have been thinking of Elements and how we always use them not realizing it has come from “stardust” from a different world that is present just beyond our Pale Blue Dot “Earth”

Do let me know if you agree and comment in your thoughts.