We are stardust, we are billion-year-old carbon

Jan 12

Harlow Shapley said in 1929, “We are the same stuff as the stars.” Carl Sagan famously repeated it in the 1970s and 1980s, “We are made of stardust.” Then lyricist-singer Joni Mitchell added it to her song “Woodstock.”

“We are stardust. We are billion year old carbon.”

— Mitchell, Joni. “Woodstock.” Ladies of the Canyon. Warner Records. 1970. Transcript of lyrics.

That was then, and it was mind-boggling. Today, scientists have “converted light energy into matter in a single step.” That just replaced the previous paradigm! It is a new reality. But is it? The sages of old have known this all along, but they did not have the tools to prove it.

“Study demonstrates a long-predicted process for generating matter directly from light...

The primary finding is that pairs of electrons and positrons—particles of matter and antimatter—can be created directly by colliding very energetic photons, which are quantum “packets” of light. This conversion of energetic light into matter is a direct consequence of Einstein’s famous E=mc2 equation, which states that energy and matter (or mass) are interchangeable. Nuclear reactions in the sun and at nuclear power plants regularly convert matter into energy. Now scientists have converted light energy directly into matter in a single step.”

— “Collisions of Light Produce Matter/Antimatter from Pure Energy.” Brookhaven National Laboratory, https://www.bnl.gov/newsroom/news.php?a=119023. Accessed 11 January 2026.

We are not stardust, we are light! Our form and all the other stuff around us and in the universe are matters that materialized from the source, light. So we are, in French philosopher Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s words, “We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.”

Can we please stop judging and fighting each other? Because when we do, we are judging and fighting ourselves. We are only hurting ourselves. We are All.

So, namaste, the universe in me recognizes the universe in you. For better or for worse, we are one, we are connected down to the quantum level, or even deeper. That “or even deeper” I know is Love.

Be still and know…