Once upon a time, long before the
earth and sun existed, Chas the carbon atom came into being
inside a large and powerful star. Chas's three parents were
helium atoms, each consisting of 2 protons and 2 neutrons, that
collided with enough speed to stick together as a single atom
with 6 protons and 6 neutrons, i.e., Chas. Like most atoms on
the earth, Chas the carbon atom is far older than the earth and
sun. This is the story of Chas.
Chas traveled on winds and currents inside the star for
millions of years, going many times from the hot central regions
to the cooler outer parts and having many, many chemical
relationships, all of them brief, lasting rarely even a billionth
of a second in the great heat.
One day the star's core, which was mostly iron and weighed
more than a million earths, could no longer support its own
weight and collapsed upon itself. The collapse happened within
tens of seconds, with the outer parts of the core accelerating
inward to nearly the speed of light. The core disappeared from
existence, leaving its gravitational and magnetic fields and the
shockwave of an enormous explosion. Chas's star was so large
that most of a day passed before news of the core collapse
reached the outer region where Chas then was.
The star was blown to atoms. Only a black hole was
left.
----------
Chas sped across space for millions of years with other atoms
of the former star, till one day when a fast-moving cosmic ray
knocked Chas right out of the galaxy.
The galaxy that Chas came out of is the one we call the Great
Galaxy in Andromeda which, if it were a little brighter or our
eyes a little bigger, would appear about the size of the
moon.
Hundreds of millions of years passed before Chas reached our
Milky Way galaxy, where interactions with photons and other atoms
slowed Chas down. After more millions of years, Chas came upon
and joined the vortex of dust and gas that would become our solar
system. Chas moved in the vortex for a billion years, had many
long-lasting chemical relationships there, and eventually became
part of a meteor about the size of a grapefruit. Then one day
long after the new sun had lit up and sunrises and sunsets were
happening on earth, Chas's grapefruit got deflected by Neptune's
gravity so that it sped inward toward the sun. It arrived on
earth billions of years before life, then in the seas, had taken
up residence on the land.
On earth, Chas often combined with oxygen atoms to be part of
carbon dioxide molecules or with other atoms to part of
formaldehyde, cyanide, and methane, and moved in the air and
oceans and in the soil. Chas spent hundreds of millions of years
locked up in carbonate rock in sea bottoms and then in mountains
that later eroded away. Twice, while in rock, Chas was carried
hundreds of miles down into the earth and later blown out of
volcanoes.
Chas's story gains some resolution in more recent time. In
1790, after most of a hundred million years in a coal seam in
what is now England, Chas was dug up and carted to Birmingham and
burned in a fire that made steam for a new James Watt engine that
powered a loom on which was woven the spun silk from which were
made the stockings worn by Lord Nelson when he died at Trafalgar.
Chas, once again part of a carbon dioxide molecule, rode about in
the active parts of the carbon cycle, in air, water, and soil,
and in plants and animals.
In 1961, Chas was part of a starch molecule in an oat used in
chicken feed that became part of a fat molecule in a muscle cell
of a chicken in California. A month later the chicken was
butchered and boiled, and Chas became part of cooking grease
that, in 1963, was used to fry a hamburger in Los Angeles on an
evening when Gene Roddenberry, who was yet to create the Star
Trek industry, stopped at a drive-in restaurant with his family.
Mr. Roddenberry ate the hamburger and Chas became part of an
alanine molecule in a protein that was part of the fingernail on
Mr. Roddenberry's right middle finger.
About a year later, Mr. Roddenberry bit off the Chas part of
the fingernail while walking on Sunset Boulevard contemplating
the prospect of warp drive. Chas landed on the sidewalk.
By mid 1967, the actions of sunlight, water, and bacteria left
Chas again blowing in the wind with two oxygen atoms.
In the fall of 1967, Chas was carried tens of miles upward, as
had happened many times before. But this time, a high-energy
photon from deep space knocked the two oxygen atoms away and
imparted enough force to propel Chas away from the earth and the
sun effectively forever.
------------
Wikipedia reports that Mr. Roddenberry died on October 24,
1991, and that a space flight is planned for 2012 to launch part
of his ashes into space. The ashes will fall back to earth in a
few decades. In the meantime, Chas is now seven light years from
the sun, on the way to another rendezvous -- perhaps back in
Andromeda . . . or some other galaxy . . .
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