• Question: What's the most favorite thing you've learned when you were in school?

    Asked by to Sam, Roberto on 24 Jun 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Sam Connolly

      Sam Connolly answered on 24 Jun 2014:

      Tough question, it’s pretty hard to remember where I learnt things… one of the things that sticks in my mind was one of my physics teachers teaching me about neutron stars for the first time. When they form from dying stars, the gravity of the star squashes them so much that the electrons in the atoms making up the star get squashed into the protons in the nucleus of the atoms, which makes neutrons. So the whole star is just made of neutrons squashed together really closely. So in some ways it’s like one gigantic atom! I thought they were pretty amazing at the time, and still do!

    • Photo: Roberto Trotta

      Roberto Trotta answered on 24 Jun 2014:

      The fact that we are all, literally, made of stardust, because all of the heavy atoms we are made of (carbon, oxygen, iron, etc) are all produced in the explosion of stars at the end of their life, and do not come from the Big Bang.

      So we are all made of recycled material from a long-gone star — this is something that really blew my mind when I first learnt it!

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