White Noise Christmas

Christians celebrate the birth of Christ, Simon Singh prefers a different birthday. He quotes Marcus Chown, author of "The Magic Furnace,"

"In order that we might live, stars in their billions, tens of billions, hundreds of billions even, have died. The iron in our blood, the calcium in our bones, the oxygen that fills our lungs each time we take a breath -- all were cooked in the furnaces of the stars which expired long before the Earth was born."

A star collapsing, to make you.

The Big Bang only produced hydrogen and helium, all the heavier elements came later, formed in the wombs of stars now long dead. Simon suggests that

Because we are made from the debris of nuclear reactions that took place in exploding stars, the romantics among you might like to think of yourselves as being composed of stardust. On the other hand, cynics might prefer to think of yourselves as nuclear waste.

I'll go with the stardust.

The third, and even sturdier, pillar to support the Big Bang model is the afterglow that should have followed a creation event, which can still be seen today. 
 
Wow: birth, wombs, and now we're basking in the afterglow; should children hear this?
It's in danger of becoming downright poetic. He goes on to say that we can get an analog radio, set it between stations and listen to it picking up microwaves from that afterglow.

“you can simply close your eyes and listen to the sound of the universe. You are experiencing the echo of the Big Bang, a relic of creation, the most ancient fossil in the universe.”

13 billion years later, that is some refractory period!    Worth celebrating, I'd say.

Happy Holidays