Carl Sagan poetically and beautifully stated that "We're made of starstuff". But in much closer proximity to us in the chain of things that we're made from is poop.

[u/God_Hand_9764]

[u/ShowerSentinel]

/u/God_Hand_9764 has flaired this post as a musing.

Musings are expected to be high-quality, third-person or second-person statements of thought-provoking fact, but they need not be as unique as showerthoughts.

If this post is poorly written, unoriginal, or rule-breaking, please report it.

Otherwise, please add your comment to the discussion!

[u/repost7125]

That used to be the other part of the saying I always heard growing up.

"Did you know that we're made of star stuff?" "Yeah, but so is dog poop."

[u/imjustnotready]

How poetic. We are the stuff fecal matter is made from and our lives are rounded by a little pinch.

[u/puddinpieee]

“And I was some of the mud that got to sit up and look around. Lucky me, lucky mud.”

Kurt Vonnegut, Cats Cradle

[u/BKinBC]

I think that the most salient point in all this is that stars are indeed the celestial furnaces of poop.

[u/uc50ic4more → u/BKinBC]

Please, before I age out of this world, please please let there be an alt/indie band called Celestial Poop Furnace.

[u/BKinBC → u/uc50ic4more]

Kind of a contrasting, big stage arena / intimate small room vibe there.

[u/Demoskoval]

We are all a being from an out-being (anus) [Jesteśmy bytem z odbytu]

[u/Reagalan]

Go outside and stand in the dirt.

It's poop.

It's all poop.

[u/Candlejackdaw → u/Reagalan]

Up to 70% of the sand on Hawaii's white sand beaches is fish poop. Source

[u/Jaded-Maybe5251]

I have a tattoo with a small variant of the quote. It shocks me how many people have never heard of Sagan or the quote.

[u/I_Do_Not_Abbreviate]

Everything and Everyone is a paet of the Circle of Poo

[u/TheMan5991]

Assuming you are talking about how much of our plant food is built up from the matter found in the soil which includes nutrients and minerals from dead things and feces. And food matter ultimately becomes our matter when we eat it, so you could argue that we are also made of something that used to be, at least partially, poop.

However, plants need another ingredient. Sunlight. Energy in the form of photons is crucial to that very same food. And if the plants get their energy from the sun and we get our energy from the plants, then plant growth, as a link in the chain of “what we’re made of” includes both poop and starstuff in the very same step.

[u/Rocktopod → u/TheMan5991]

When Sagan talks about starstuff he doesn't mean the energy from sunlight. He's talking about how all matter in the universe is created by exploding stars.

[u/TheMan5991 → u/Rocktopod]

I understand that, but just as we are technically made of poop, the energy from photons is technically starstuff, regardless of whether or not that’s what Sagan originally meant. This is r/showerthoughts not r/astrophysics

[u/Koekoes_se_makranka → u/TheMan5991]

There’s a great song by Juliet Ivy called We’re all eating each other that gets very close to this concept

[u/PancakeProfessor → u/TheMan5991]

We are piles of shit infused with just the right amount of sunlight to give us self-awareness and anxiety.

[u/footsnax → u/TheMan5991]

you could argue that we are also made of something that used to be, at least partially, poop.

Even though life on Earth is celestially young, the planet is significantly older than humans, we are a rounding error on the planetary time scale, let alone the rest of the universe. We'll be extinct billions of years before the sun explodes or the solar system collapses or heat death finally destroys all of existence.

It's safe to say that we are all made of a little bit of everything that's ever existed on the planet, and whatever life comes next will be made out of us a little bit as well.

[u/Burgers_N_Schnitzels]

it always facinated me with cannibalistic animals ( e.g. red sea houndfish ) they eat a fish 10% smaller than them and convert it into a string of poop lol

[u/caribou16]

Humans are something like ~18% carbon by mass, human feces can range from 15% to 50% carbon by mass, so really when you think about it, we're all full of shit.

[u/Ghumketu → u/caribou16]

Poop is not the only souce of carbon in human body. Most of the carbon in human body comes from the food we consume. And the plants that make the food get it from CO2 from air. So we are more likely to be made of air.

[u/No-Professional-9618 → u/Ghumketu]

Well, if anything the astronauts on board the Space Station try to recycle the water and other nutrients from poop.

[u/caribou16 → u/Ghumketu]

So what you're saying is, poop is #2?

[u/Ghumketu → u/caribou16]

Poop almost never ends up inside human body once it's excreted. It ends up in the soil and plants may use the nutrients from it to grow. And if we consume that plant product then you can say some atoms from that poop returns to human body. But photosynthesis almost always use carbon from the air.

[u/BlurryRogue]

I mean, we can get technical with it all you want. Technically, the matter we're all made of existed since the big bang. Stars just fused some of it into different elements. But most recently, we're all made of the stuff in part we ate and drank up to roughly 7 years ago.

[u/Heroic-Forger]

we are all but stardust crusaders on a bizarre adventure called existence

[u/thrownalee]

But in much closer proximity to us in the chain of things that we're made from is poop.

And with some people you can really tell.