We Are All Connected

...from a single clove of garlic to the big bang...

This whole rant starts with a single action. A clove of garlic left in my fridge for too long began to sprout roots. I thought it only fitting, since I had a pot of soil outside from a failed run at growing tomatoes, that I plant the clove to see what would happen. If my theories proved correct, I would soon beat out the consumerist engine that was supermarket garlic and would soon have the means of producing an infinite supply of my own garlic.

I was looking at my INFINITE GARLIC producing plant this morning and I realized something fascinating. While under the soil, the garlic clove that I planted contained nearly everything it needed to produce a sprout. This sprout, plus a bit of water, I imagine, is itself, made of garlic.

Better still, once its green bits peek above the soil, it will combine carbon from CO2 in the air, hydrogen from water, and energy from the sun's UV rays to produce hydrocarbons which will make up the bulk of the plant. The plant will then make more garlic, which I will eat. Upon metabolizing the garlic and breaking those hydrocarbons into simpler molecules, I will be harnessing the stored energy of the sun to power my body. In addition, those simple molecules will become bits of ME.

Even better still, we can trace the elements in the air, the water, the garlic, and myself back all the way to exploding stars, from which we can trace to coalescing hydrogen clouds in deep space, from there to elementary particles, and from there we can go all the way back to the big bang.

This is a simple example of how science is the very best tool we have for understanding our place in the greater universe. The further back and deeper into anything we go, the more it starts to sound like spiritualist, hippie nonsense, but ...it's really not. Saying things like, "we are all star stuff" is well and good, but the clear connections are all there for us to find. While the spiritual viewpoint claims we are all connected, it skips all of the hard bits like evidence and proof, and that is why science will always win. 

Now, if we could only figure out how magnets work...