In the dark wells of the universe matter fell together. It is thought that the first stars formed only 30 million years after the big bang, and around 500 million years after this galaxies like the Milky Way formed. Clumps of hydrogen and helium formed huge clouds, some places were denser than others and clumps of gas and dust fell in on each other, crushing under their own weight. As these giant gas clouds spun they became denser and denser causing objects to collide more and more, and warming up everything around them.

Most of these balls of gas remained unchanged, making brown dwarfs, which are just a bit bigger than Jupiter, but the heavier ones pushed at the hydrogen atoms in their center so much that they eventually ignited. These were the first stars.

Alchemy began in the stars as hydrogen atoms fused together to make more helium. Huge amounts of energy is released when this happens, exploding in a fire strong enough to keep the star burning for millions more years. After all of the hydrogen is used up stars can then burn helium to create heavier elements, this releases less energy as less mass is lost. The stars then loose some of their thermal pressure and they collapse a little. This can ignite them again and give them enough energy to keep burning, making heavier atoms and causing the star to swell, shedding its skin in a giant red cloud. These are known as red giants. Some stars stop here, leaving a core as small as the Earth made of heavily compressed carbon, the same thing as diamonds, and weighing as much as the Sun. These are white dwarfs.

The more massive a star is the hotter, and bluer, it is. Hotter stars can burn more elements into existence but live significantly shorter lives. All of the natural elements burnt into existence inside of the most massive stars. Lastly, they grow a skin of iron which sets off a nuclear fission reaction resulting in a supernova. The star explodes with the power of a trillion nuclear bombs, splashing the elements all around them. Sometimes after these explosions the core is so heavy that all of the electrons are released from their atoms creating a sea of electrons. In heavier stars still the electrons and protons melt together creating neutrons once again. These are known as neutron stars.

The largest stars leave ashes so heavy that they fall in on each other, stretching space into a black hole. Black holes are wells in spacetime so deep that even light cannot escape and can be as massive as 250 million Suns. These were so heavy that they bent the space around the newly formed galaxies, pulling at distant stars just enough to ignite them.

Eventually one of these supernova explosions created a cloud of dust and gas so heavy that almost all of this fell back together again and, 4.57 billion years ago, it began to glow as a dull yellow star, the Sun. A tiny amount of matter was left swirling around the valley of space created by its mass. Some parts were denser than others and so they fell together making larger and larger clumps. After a few tens of thousands of years the planets took their shape. Our Earth is just part of the debris of a huge stellar explosion, and from these ashes humans grew.

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