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Article: One atom's amazing journey; It was born in the big bang billions of years ago, blew through space, dived to the primordial swamps of Earth, was consumed by a dinosaur, then inhaled by Julius Caesar. . . And you could be breathing it in right now.
- Article from:
- The Mail on Sunday (London, England)
- Article date:
- March 18, 2001
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2001 Solo Syndication Limited. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Byline: JULIAN CHAMPKIN
Once upon a time, the whole universe was crammed into a space the size of a cricket ball: 160 billion billion stars-worth were squeezed inside it.
And, roughly 15 billion years ago, it all went off with a rather big bang.
From here, subatomic particles began streaming outwards. For 100 million years they travelled through space as the universe expanded. Then some of them began coalescing into a star. The particles did nothing but bash into each other thousands of times a second until the star burned itself out - and in its last stages of existence, after five billion years, 13 of those particles came together to make an ...