Why Don't We Remember Being Stars?

“The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of starstuff.”

When Carl Sagan said this, he did a wonderful job referencing the various aspects of our bodies and how they relate to the cosmos. Indeed, everything that we are made of is traceable to the crucibles of dying stars. It's not just the nitrogen in our DNA, but also the carbon that lines every one of our cells and the hydrogen and oxygen that make up our water, which can only be formed either within a star or as the result of their cataclysmic deaths. Break down the human body, and you get cells. Break apart cells, and you're left with a vast array of complex molecules, which are nothing more than the amalgam of a few dozen different atoms. Whether it's our food, our muscles, or even our brains, all can be broken down into the three pieces that comprise atoms: protons, neutrons, and electrons. Not only are we made of starstuff, we are starstuff. This idea was also well put by English Physicist Brain Cox,

“We are the cosmos made conscious and life is the means by which the universe understands itself.”

This of course begs the question: at what point did all that stuff stop being a star and start being "you"? It's not too hard to fathom that our idea of "I"and reality can be broken down into innumerable complex moving parts bouncing, jiggling, and vibrating against one another. Before you were born, your atoms were all still in the universe, arranged in different ways. Even today "you" get gradually replaced with new memories and new parts, courtesy of your food and the sheet of dead cells that line your body.

But the actual nature of things is quite a bit spookier. We often think about different elements as being completely unique entities. Coal (carbon) is nothing like helium or gold. It's quite easy to for us to forget however that the ONLY difference between any two elements is the number of protons they carry in their nuclei. In truth, it would be more accurate to refer to each of the elements as increasingly bloated bundles of hydrogen. But the only reason that hydrogen atoms can fuse inside of stars to form heavier elements, is because protons can transform into neutrons. And this is a common feature one observes in the quantum realm; particles are constantly transforming into one another. Not only that, but they can instantly appear from apparently nothing, flashing into existence and popping out again.

So what's the difference between all these things? As it turns out, it seems that the only two distinctions between everything we observe is the amount of energy they contain and the form in which they take. Which leads us to the question titled in this article, "If we never went anywhere, why don't we remember being inside of stars?" The answer to this particular question is quite obvious. I barely remember what I had for breakfast last week, let alone my birth, of course we don't remember anything that happens to our atoms before we are born. If we did, there wouldn't still be people around who thought the world was flat or only 6000 years old.

But there is a larger, looming question that reality poses upon us. If everything in the universe is made up of the same ingredients organized in different ways, then who exactly are "you"? I don't have time to go into too far into that rabbit hole here, but that's why I wrote a book. In truth, there seems to be no clear line to draw between anything that exists within time and space. So in the spirit the fabulous verbiage of Sagan or Cox, I've decided to cut out the middleman, and go with my own universal quote,

"You are the universe looking back at itself. One with the entire process of existence."