The Magic Of Reality

The Magic Of Reality explains many of the world’s natural phenomenons in a scientific way, so that you can understand how the elementary components of our planet work together to logically, yet beautifully, create the place we all call home.

Do you know how the natural elements of our periodic system, like hydrogen, oxygen, helium, iron, etc. are created? It’s neither easy, nor obvious, so don’t feel bad in case you don’t know (I didn’t either).

Everything you can touch, feel and see is made up of atoms, but where do their different kinds come from? You probably know that all planetary bodies, including stars, have a gravity field around them. These interact with each other, such as the moon causing high and low tide through its gravitational pull on earth.

Gravity causes atoms to vibrate and the more they do, the hotter they get. So if a big star, like the sun, has a super strong gravity field, the pressure and heat eventually get so big that atoms melt together – for example two hydrogen atoms fusing into one helium molecule, thus creating a new element.

If a star burns through its hydrogen very fast, all the excess energy that’s created in the process leads to more atoms bashing into each other, and the new helium molecules in turn fuse into other, bigger, heavier elements, like iron, carbon or oxygen.

In case of a supernova, a big star exploding, all of these elements are hurled into the universe creating giant clouds of gas and dust, which slowly build their own gravity field, that then repeats the process – and that’s how natural elements are created 🙂

Can you name all the colors of a rainbow? I can’t! I think I can name some, but not all of them. There are seven in total, ranging from one end of the visible spectrum of light to the other: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet. These colors represent different wavelengths and frequencies, with red being longer waves, that are emitted less often (=less frequently) and violet being very short waves, that are more frequent. Just like each rainbow has a unique combination of colors, so has each element that’s part of a star. Scientists can use spectrometers to see the range of colors that represents the whole star, which looks like a barcode, based on the different wavelengths of the light. This is then used to derive what elements a star contains, which in turn tells us how far away the star is. Even cooler, because this spectrum keeps changing – for example the red portion gets stronger as a star moves away from us, because the waves get longer –…