A Truly Ancient Kid

Theme for March: Vastness

Wednesday, March 3, 2021

           I am legally 79 years old, but according to an astrophysicist friend of mine, I’ve been around for billions of years. In fact, I’m not just a senior citizen, but a truly ancient guy, as old as the stars. Scientific studies say that my body is composed of approximately 7,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 atoms, most of which, my friend tells me, came into being when giant stars exploded several billion years ago. Apparently these atoms browsed around the universe for eons before they somehow assembled and settled together in 1941 to produce an arrangement that was given the name ‘Hamilton Salsich’. Who knows — some of my atoms might have been part of prehistoric mountains or the kidney of a king or a wee shrew’s eyes, before they – lucky for me – linked up to bring a baby to life in St. Louis 79 years ago. What’s equally amazing is that numerous studies suggest that the 37 trillion cells in my body are replaced with brand new ones about every ten years, which means, unless I’m missing something, that my body is now only about 10 years old! If I understand this correctly, I’ve been around for billions of years, but am still just a 10-year-old kid! I’m truly ancient, but still – truly – in the springtime of life! 🌞

Two Lucky Hikers

This morning we took a 2-hour walk in the Canonchet Preserve in Hopkinton, RI, and saw these lovely scenes …

… and took this video …