November 4, 2011 by  Without this, you would not exist.  It
should be considered common knowledge by this point that without
the Sun the life on this planet would not exist.  It provides us
with warmth, vitamins, light, and various other things that have
helped to cultivate the planet Earth into the biosphere that it
has become and made our existence possible.  What many are
unaware of, however, is that without the death of stars in the
form of supernovae, life would not be possible either.  The
elements that make up most of our bodies such as carbon and
iron, along with elements making up plant life and the ones
embedded in Earth's crust that we have used to create everything
around us were, at one time, created inside the core of a dying
star when the processes of nuclear fusion started to break down
and the star began to collapse in on itself.  And without
supernovae that occurred close enough to spread these elements
throughout our galaxy, our solar system,  and into the
atmosphere of our planet, we would