At the instant of Fe’s birth, its dying Mother shone more brightly than any object in the universe. A red giant at the end of her long reign, the Mother Star indulged in one final collapse before violently exploding, ending her existence and birthing a new era of infinite potential upon the young, sterile galaxy. Indeed, each Earthborn destined to interact with the atom Fe, including those who would learn its tale, could trace every last particle in their own skin, sinew, and nerve to that same stellar womb.
As with most stories, it all started with hydrogen. Though, a minority of helium atoms, to be fair, populated the early universe alongside their smaller cousins–the leftovers from the big bang. Hydrogen existed as a heavy, charged proton, while helium hefted a nucleus of two. However many sterile neutrons bulked up their cores, and however many charged little electrons they gained or lost, the atoms’ identities remained as long as they clung to the single or double proton that defined their existence. They drifted seemingly forever before succumbing to the desire that motivates human beings and interstellar dust particles alike–the need for companionship.
Gravity, that fundamental force of the universe, patiently set to work.
In the beginning, it was agonizingly slow. The particles drifted across a vast nothingness, attracted to each other by the smallest, faintest tugs. Eon by eon, their drifting grew less aimless, more vectored–their journeys as uneventful as they were epic. Though staggering distances still separated the atoms, the most concentrated areas of space became bustling cities compared with the nothingness outside. Silent and black, each existed as a galactic necropole–light, heat, noise, and fire still a faraway dream.
An epic tug of war silently raged as each hydrogen cluster exerted its own tiny gravity upon its neighbors. Gravitationally-mediated mergers turned millions of hydrogen cities into thousands of kingdoms. Thousands of kingdoms became hundreds of empires, collapsing and conjoining into one. At long last, a single, unimaginably vast megalopolis stood proud against the emptiness of the galaxy–a newborn nebula.
Gravity was not yet finished with the insignificant hydrogen atoms. They had finally found one another after traveling stretches of time and space that defy comprehension, but the force that had once been so gentle and distant now began to grow exponentially more monstrous. Inevitably, the cloud collapsed under its own weight, gravity forcibly transforming the beautiful nebula into one of the first true objects in the universe. She possessed mass and a coherent shape. She glowed–expressing herself in floods of massless photons that illuminated the cold, dark emptiness from which she had been born.
Mentored by gravity, the proto-Mother matured, and the denser she grew, the hungrier its pull became. For the septendecillions of hydrogen atoms at the core, this crushing desire became so powerful that, when their madly-embracing protons encountered the universal barrier against two particles occupying the same space at the same time–they leaped over the law, two fusing together to become one.
Two lonely hydrogens became a single atom of helium, an entity somewhat less than the sum of its parts. Indeed, the missing quantum of its mass had transformed into pure energy during the fusion reaction, betraying a bizarre feature of a cold and calculating universe–all matter is simply energy trapped in a corporeal state.
Crushed-together particles grew frenzied by this new influx of thermal and kinetic motivation. Propelled by the font of fire, other atoms began to follow the pioneering hydrogens. More couples fused together, and the massive energies they released multiplied their neighbors’ unions exponentially. Miraculously, the Mother’s fiery core stabilized, and the chain reaction of ecstatic fusion became self-sustaining. She was a star, and she lit up the early galaxy.
Despite their radiant glory, her class of young stars did not represent order emerging from chaos. They did not violate the laws of death. Suns like the Mother radiated titanic amounts of energy into the galactic void, energy that had once been matter–never again to exist in a state of order. Above all else, stars were engines of chaos and profligate entropy.
Fe was still not yet even a twinkle in its self-absorbed Mother’s eye in those early eons. The glowing giantess had more pressing matters to deal with. She had other children to birth.
At a certain point, her appetite for hydrogen ran out. It was no matter. The Mother was a powerful beast who could consume her helium children as easily as she’d feasted on the primal hydrogen they’d been born from. Two helium atoms were not enough to satisfy, however, but when a third joined its siblings, they turned to something new and stable–an atom of carbon. This newborn scion was defined by the six protons in its nucleus, incidentally representing the upstream destruction of six unique hydrogen atoms.
When there were no more light elements to easily cannibalize, the Mother turned her enormous temperature and pressure to the infant carbons. Two atoms entered the nuclear forge and exited as neon, sacrificing a modicum of mass to satisfy their mother’s hunger for energy. Each time, her children went willingly into the fire, for they always emerged as something more–neon became oxygen became silicon. Each era of nuclear fusion represented a briefer phase than the one that had preceded it. By the time she found herself desperately fusing silicon atoms together, the Mother Star’s life was nearing its end.
As her core collapsed, solid silicon became bombarded by a throng of helium nuclei, fusing silicon to sulfur. Sulfur became argon–argon became calcium. She struggled to maintain her internal pressure, each rapid new stage of fusion providing paltry stoking for her nuclear fires. Calcium was reborn as titanium, which was almost immediately transformed into chromium–the heaviest child yet at twenty four protons. It was not enough–not enough.
As the Mother Star exploded and died, the atom Fe was brought into the universe. A chromium atom, born mere moments earlier, ended its short existence at the hands of a stray helium. Under the terrible pressure of the supernova, the twenty four protons of the chromium combined with the helium nucleus to create iron.
Fe was born.
All around the baby iron atom, the womb writhed with chaos. Its siblings were madly forged into being just as others decayed–brutalized into simpler forms. Fe’s existence could have easily ended then and there, should a chance encounter with a rogue helium have taken place. The infant Fe was lucky, however. Its Mother died too quickly to ensure further fusion. At last betrayed by the gravity that had created her, she collapsed in an eyeblink. Her supernova’s enormous energies turned inward, turned outward, and wrenched free. A trillion trillion trillion photons screamed out into the night, messengers announcing the Mother Star’s departure from the universe, then darkness.
Fe found itself hurtled outward, but not into the void. Gravity was strong near the central collection of the Mother’s viscera, and a cluster soon formed–another baby nebula. Gradually, the forces of attraction asserted themselves, just as before. Hot atoms smashed into one another, sharing electrons and bonding themselves into compounds. As the increasingly fiery nebula swirled and condensed, its core grew more and more massive. Fe stayed out of the thick of things, drifting via random atomic motion, submissive to the currents of gravity.
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Half-melted bits collided and stuck to others. Fe joined with sibling iron atoms, partnering with minorities of nickels and manganeses, to condense into a sizable metallic lump billions upon quintillions strong. Together, Fe and the other atoms inside the asteroid sailed through the thin, debris-strewn hydrogen soup that surrounded the protostar.
Within the central crucible, hydrogens who never had a chance to join their nuclei in the Mother found exoneration in the core of Sol–the newborn Sun. Flares and energetic particles erupted from the young star as it ignited, blasting away the gaseous remains of the nebula. Its energetic solar winds even bombarded Fe’s asteroid, but the heavy iron-nickel mass weathered the storm. The system stabilized, and Sol shone brightly, settling in for eons of hydrogen burning.
Several bodies grew large enough to distinguish themselves–entire molten worlds accreting from embers of rock and metal. Sometimes two of these massive planetesimals collided. Occasionally, they merged, and sometimes, they simply tore each other to shreds. Fe orbited within the vicinity as gravity bashed two of the giants together in a spectacular display of carnage. Captured by one another’s pull, each ripped into the very core of their opponent, spraying a spiral of glowing-hot debris into space. After many revolutions, the aftermath resolved–the larger planetesimal that would one day be called ‘Earth’ healed and regained its spherical shape, holding the smaller, defeated mass in thrall as its anomalously large satellite.
Thousands of asteroids, including Fe’s, gradually migrated toward a belt accumulating around the inner planets. However, an irregular rocky chunk, unstable in its orbit and helpless to maneuver, delivered a glancing blow to the larger body ridden by Fe. Bonded in metallic lattice, the atom vibrated with a thrum of sudden kinetic energy. Chunks of alloy sheared from the asteroid’s surface, cooling and floating off into oblivion. The rocky interloper careened wildly away after the impact, fated to be swallowed up by the enormous planet Jupiter. Fe’s asteroid took a different path. Vectored out of the inner Solar system, it flew beyond the orbits of even the outermost gas giants and still further, until Sol became just another bright star in the distance.
Once every several hundred thousand years, measured in revolutions of the Earth about its star, Fe’s asteroid would make an inevitable return to the inner system, moving along its orbital trajectory as smoothly as if it ran on rails. The metallic space-rock avoided the giant planets, hardly encountering even the smallest bit of matter during its endless cycle of lopsided orbits about Sol–one brief moment of light and heat, followed by a frigid, black eternity.
Millions of years passed this way in the young Solar system. Over and over, Fe’s asteroid traced its wild loop. The inner planets were all still aflame. Mercury, scorched by its massive stellar neighbor, was dragged along helplessly by Sol’s gravity. The Earth-sized Venus smoldered in its orbit, volcanoes bursting like angry pustules on the world’s surface. The third planet danced with its giant moon, exchanging momentum while waltzing through the universe together. The diminutive, iron-rich Mars stood sentinel for the terrestrial planets, marking the wall of asteroids which separated them from the giants. Jupiter’s surface stormed and raged, its core boiled with unknowable pressures, and lovely Saturn slowly developed magnificent moons and rings. Uranus and Neptune shivered in their distant orbits, churning global seas of frozen gasses and marking the boundaries of the planets’ domain.
Fe’s glacially slow U-turn eventually led the asteroid back into the Solar system to enjoy its too-brief sojourn in sunlight. Compared with its lengthy journey through the faraway empty regions, Fe’s rock basked in Sol’s glory for a mere instant.
Inside the nearby planet Earth, a white hot mass of Fe’s sibling irons revolved like a communal dynamo, creating powerful currents and generating a strong magnetic field that protected the young planet from Sol’s relentless, atmosphere-stripping wind. The young Earth flexed its gravity, holding onto water molecules, some carbon dioxide, and above all nitrogen. Large comets of frozen water–two ancient hydrogens bonded to a single oxygen–slammed into the planet’s surface, dumping payload after payload until the Earth became a wet planet. Such a bombardment had given Mars a watery surface as well, and the hot planet Venus grew similarly soaked.
One billion years after Sol’s ignition, fundamental changes began within its empire. During one orbit, Fe’s asteroid passed a sterile Earth–on the next, it sailed above a living world. A near-infinite number of random particle interactions had formed certain compounds, precursors to proteins. These simple molecules grew in complexity via successful one-in-a-million combinations until they had become self-replicating. The proteins most successful at synthesizing chemical copies of themselves lived on, and the process of natural selection took over.
Another billion years of monotony-on-rails for Fe, but downbelow, life was busy building walls to protect itself from the outside world, drinking in Sol’s light to stay alive. The metallic asteroid swung in close and hurtled back out into purgatory, silently enduring cycle after cycle of the fateful dance. Nothing ever happened to the atom Fe or its bonded, static siblings. The Earth, however, underwent changes more rapid and more revolutionary than any world for light years around.
Trillions of tiny photosynthesizing factories pumped molecule after molecule of volatile oxygen into the planet’s atmosphere, leading to stranger and stranger phenomena. Eukaryotes breathed the highly-reactive gas, meeting, competing, and turning the gears of evolution ever more rapidly. As life blossomed upon the Earth, the small planet Mars began to die. Over billions of years, the diminutive world cooled and faded. Left with no magnetic field and no protection, solar wind blasted away much of its atmosphere. Mars’ water evaporated, and its thin crust of organics withered. All that remained was a corpse of a world, stained red with oxides of Fe’s wasted siblings.
Pass after pass, Fe’s asteroid waited for the perfect synchronicity of the laws of physics that would release it from its orbital prison. Down on Earth, photosynthetic land-dwellers, colored by their chlorophyll, graffitied the world in green. Ages passed, and land animals took over the lush continents, insects spreading their wings to buzz through the low jungles. Eons of competition followed, and eventually, the very continents of Earth were shaken by colossal organisms grown to unheard of proportions–dinosaurs proliferating in their billions. An asteroid, far larger and more expeditious than Fe’s own, brought down one biological empire, only to give rise to another. A new order ascended, boasting fur and warm blood, caring ever more intimately for its young. Epic dramas between predators and prey played themselves out on the surface of the breathing world. Horns clashed, teeth bit, and blood spilled. Frightened things burrowed into the ground, and seagoing leviathans lurked beneath the blue planet’s waves. Fated by orbital dynamics, the wayward asteroid’s path converged into the perfect plane, at the perfect distance, and at the perfect time.
It would only be a matter of orbits.
Locked in its metallic lattice, Fe completed another hundred or so, passing ever closer to the fated Earth. Meanwhile, large, tree-dwelling animals diverged from their mammalian ancestors, using cunning brains and dexterous hands to carve out a niche for themselves. Their brave descendants learned to master fire born from atmospheric lightning, and they quickly ascended to dominate the globe. They grew smarter, stronger, and taller–they trapped abstract thought in bits of mundane matter. They became human. From one orbit to the next, they wandered their world.
Some four and half billion years after its birth, the atom Fe left Earth and its crafty creatures behind once more, swinging off into the void for the final time. Hostile climatic conditions, or the discovery of an especially fertile landscape, occasionally induced the hominid wanderers to pause their perambulations. Where they settled, the humans built cities and gods. Sitting still for so long motivated the primates to move stones into neat piles and call those who stood atop ‘king’. They dug ore from the planet’s skin and smashed it with rocks. They tamed the world’s beasts, learning to bend the evolution of their fellow creatures toward their own ends…
Excerpt from “Fe: An Atom’s Tale” Copyright © 2024 Benjamin Bronte
Published by Elegua Editions LLC. all rights reserved
ISBN 979-8-9904681-7-7