The Magic Furnace

Every breath you take contains atoms forged in the blistering furnaces deep inside stars. Every flower you pick contains atoms blasted into space by stellar explosions that blazed brighter than a billion suns. Every book you read contains atoms blown across unimaginable gulfs of space and time by the wind between stars.

Finally, after millions of centuries, there arose creatures that thought, that speculated, that theorised about the world they inhabited and asked questions about how they had come to be in it. The atoms forged long ago in the fireball of the big bang, in countless stars across the length and breadth of the galaxy, became incorporated into human beings. They became, in short, the atoms of curiosity.

Now, why should the universe be constructed in such a way that atoms acquire the ability to be curious about themselves? That, surely, is one of the greatest unexplained puzzles of science.

Marcus Chown, The Magic Furnace, 1999.