things we

So We’re Made of Star Stuff

Artwork by Carmela Ochea

“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 star stuff.” -Carl Sagan

 

The body we relegate to the most mundane tasks—commuting, making small talk, eating apple pie—is shaped from the residue of stars. Carl Sagan put it best when he told us the cosmos is within us. A connection to our cosmic origin is our ticket to seeing life as a voyage through glittering possibilities.

1977 might have been the last time we made something out of that genuine optimism. The Voyager Golden Records, two phonograph time capsules, are the sole passengers aboard Voyagers 1 and 2. The records contain fragments of our existence expressed in audio and images selected to exemplify the best the people of earth have achieved. The records contain sounds of the natural world, musical selections from different cultures and eras, ancient human languages, and noises that belong to none of us and all of us—like laughter and running down steps.

So we’re star-stuff. The Golden Records may drift by intelligent extraterrestrial life form some time in the future—or future humans. But what next for us?

Are we the universe’s clingy ex? Imagine that conversation: You made us, and then you ditched us. The universe can’t just do that. That’s the conversation we have all the time when we tilt back our necks and remember how small we all must look from the position the universe sits in.

Then again, I can see why the universe would keep its distance. These days, we barter starlight for LED light. We defunded space exploration programs. We aren’t very good creations at all.

How is it that the one time scientists and artists decide to say the same thing, we decide to ignore it? The survival of our species hinges on our urge to travel to remote places. As does the happiness of it, evidently. Why else would we keep falling in love between the pages of a book, dreaming of being taken to some other place? We are hardwired to dream about other worlds.

Traveling to space may have lost its appeal, but looking at the stars never will. The stars made us, so of course we’re meant for them. Looking at the stars tells of one truth running through the DNA of every human. I’m lost. I’ve fallen out of step of this world’s most important dance. I’m the only one on planet earth that feels this alone.

You’re not. None of us are. We keep stargazing because we’re lost together, looking for the same thing. Someone else even a little like us turns that empty feeling inside our chests—an emptiness that feels like it’s supposed to compete with the emptiness of space—into joy.

The record includes the message per aspera ad astra in Morse code. It also carries an hour-long recording of the brainwaves of Ann Druyan. The brainwaves combine Druyan’s stream of consciousness thoughts of Earth’s history to what it was like to fall in love.

Ann Druyan was married Carl Sagan. Their love lives past them, after it found a home voyaging through the stars.

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Erica Macri is a 21-year-old writer studying English and Economics at Boston College. She is a New Jersey native who has always felt like she has one foot in New York. Erica has an affinity for redwood trees, window seats, and dogs of all sizes.

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