Travel back in time and discover the surprising origin story of the atoms that make up your body – a million years in the making. <\/p>
Four elements\u00a0account for\u00a096 per cent of your mass: oxygen, carbon, hydrogen and nitrogen. Oxygen makes up over 61 per cent of your mass, compared with hydrogen at just 10 per cent, but hydrogen is a much lighter element, so around 63 per cent of your atoms are hydrogen atoms, 24 per cent oxygen and 12 per cent carbon.<\/p>\n
Most of your hydrogen atoms come from the water you drink<\/a>, and if this is tap water from a reservoir, then 100 years ago these atoms could have been in any of the world\u2019s oceans. Groundwater aquifers exchange water more slowly though, over timescales of several thousand years. So even 1,000 years ago, some of the hydrogen in your body may have been in the groundwater beneath your feet.<\/p>\n Your oxygen atoms got into your body from the air you breathe. Gases in the atmosphere<\/a> are churned in a chaotic way by the weather, but it\u2019s safe to assume that any given oxygen atom could have been anywhere in the world as recently as a few years ago.<\/p>\n Your carbon<\/a> and nitrogen atoms come from food, and today\u2019s globalised agriculture also imports those atoms from all over the world. A million years ago is long enough that most of your atoms were evenly distributed throughout the planet\u2019s surface and atmosphere. Some of them would have been bound up in rocks, waiting to be weathered and released into the atmosphere or absorbed by plants.<\/p>\n But around 5,000 tonnes of new material falls\u00a0to Earth every year<\/a> from space. So, it is a statistical certainty that a million years ago, some of the atoms destined to form you were trapped in asteroids, flying through space on trajectories that would eventually collide with Earth.<\/p>\n Read more: <\/strong><\/p>\n Asked by: Peter Jackson, Cornwall<\/strong><\/p>\n To submit your questions email us at questions@sciencefocus.com (don\u2019t forget to include your name and location)<\/em><\/p> <\/body><\/html>\n Travel back in time and discover the surprising origin story of the atoms that make up your body – a million years in the making. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":25477,"template":"","categories":[30],"acf":{"readingTimeMinutes":"2"},"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/42\/2023\/03\/the-incredible-origins-of-you-heres-where-your-bodys-atoms-were-a-million-years-ago.png",1200,510,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/42\/2023\/03\/the-incredible-origins-of-you-heres-where-your-bodys-atoms-were-a-million-years-ago-150x150.png",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/42\/2023\/03\/the-incredible-origins-of-you-heres-where-your-bodys-atoms-were-a-million-years-ago-300x128.png",300,128,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/42\/2023\/03\/the-incredible-origins-of-you-heres-where-your-bodys-atoms-were-a-million-years-ago-768x326.png",768,326,true],"large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/42\/2023\/03\/the-incredible-origins-of-you-heres-where-your-bodys-atoms-were-a-million-years-ago-1024x435.png",800,340,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/42\/2023\/03\/the-incredible-origins-of-you-heres-where-your-bodys-atoms-were-a-million-years-ago.png",1200,510,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/42\/2023\/03\/the-incredible-origins-of-you-heres-where-your-bodys-atoms-were-a-million-years-ago.png",1200,510,false]},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"importmanagerhub@sprylab.com","author_link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcsciencefocus\/author\/importmanagerhubsprylab-com\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"Travel back in time and discover the surprising origin story of the atoms that make up your body - a million years in the making.","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcsciencefocus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed\/25476"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcsciencefocus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcsciencefocus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/rss_feed"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcsciencefocus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcsciencefocus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25477"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcsciencefocus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25476"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcsciencefocus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25476"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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