• Question: Why is everything made out of atoms?

    Asked by 926enek48 to Emma, Karla, Shane, Stephen, Yang on 13 Nov 2017.
    • Photo: Emma Hanley

      Emma Hanley answered on 13 Nov 2017:

      Everything in the Universe is made of matter except energy, and all matter is made of atoms. I guess we are made of atoms so we can exist.

    • Photo: Stephen Rhatigan

      Stephen Rhatigan answered on 17 Nov 2017:

      It wasn’t always like that – it took a few minutes after the Big Bang before protons and neutrons clustered together to form the first nuclei and it took another 380,000 years of the Universe cooling before electrons became trapped in orbits about these nuclei to form the first atoms, which were mostly hydrogen and helium.
      After another 1.6 million years the first stars began to form and these produced atoms of heavier elements like carbon, oxygen and iron which were then spit out into the Universe in supernova explosions.
      Atoms began to bind together to form molecules and compounds and the complexity increased all the way up to living organisms.

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