Last summer during a camping trip, I was lying on my back staring at the stars when this thought hit me: what if space isn't just empty darkness between pretty lights? I'd been working on this abstract painting inspired by the night sky, trying to capture that feeling of infinite space, when I started wondering what's actually happening out there. Turns out, space isn't empty at all. It's basically the universe's chemistry lab, where molecules are getting cooked up in conditions so extreme they'd make our school's chemistry lab look like a playground. And here's the mind-blowing part: some of those molecules floating around in space are the same ones that make up life on Earth. What if the same carbon atoms in your pencil were once floating in space, getting made in a cosmic chemistry lab billions of years ago? Space: The Ultimate Chemistry Lab When I first learned about the "interstellar medium" in chemistry class, I thought it was just a ...
by Mehar Kaur Minhas