Celebrating The Hubble Space Telescope's 25th orbit in 2018, the Natural History Museum in Vienna hosted the exhibition "Our Place in Space" curated by Ulrike Kuchner, an exhibition by the Hubble Space Telescope and the European Space Agency.
Hubble's ability to detect the chemical elements using spectroscopy, has far-reaching implications for our understanding of the universe, particularly in how these elements contribute to the formation of planets and, ultimately, life. The elements detected by Hubble—such as hydrogen, helium, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, silicon, and iron—are not only present in stars but also form the building blocks of planets' geochemistry, minerals, and rocks.
For instance, carbon and oxygen are fundamental components of carbonates and silicates, which are abundant in the Earth's crust. Silicon, combined with oxygen, forms silicate minerals, the most common type of minerals on Earth. Iron is a major component of the Earth's core and contributes to the planet's magnetic field. These elements, produced in the cores of stars and distributed across the galaxy through supernova explosions and stellar winds, are essential for the formation of rocky planets and their diverse geochemical compositions.
Furthermore, these same elements are integral to all known life forms, including humans. The human body, for example, is composed primarily of oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, calcium, and phosphorus—elements that were forged in stars. Oxygen is vital for respiration, carbon is the backbone of organic molecules, and calcium is crucial for bones and teeth. Hydrogen, the most abundant element in the universe, is a key component of water, which is essential for all known forms of life.
The Human Body is composed of several octillion atoms. And each one of these atoms was created in space, some of them directly at the big bang, like hydrogen, and some others out of collisions or explosions of stars. Each one of the atoms creating our bodies was born in space, and arrived in the right place at the right time on the perfectly positioned earth to bond and make up humans, trees, minerals and everything we know on the planet.
In each one of the 200 bottles hangs one element in a specific form (mineral, liquid, gas) and it is labeled with the place where it was created and the place where we can find it on earth, including the chemical elements that make up our bodies. Our bodies were actually created at the big bang, in exploding massive stars or white dwarfs, and even in the collision of neutron stars. “The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of starstuff.” — Carl Sagan
This project was initially constructed with the support of the Mineralogy Department at the Museum of Natural History in Vienna, Austria, and with the special support of Dr. Vera Hammer
Since 2018, "our celestial bodies" has been traveling around the globe, being exhibited at:
Bogotá, Colombia: Our Place in Space
Shanghai, China: "Cosmological Elements", curated by Claudia Schnugg and Iris Long, Chinese National Astronomy
Beijing, China: "Cosmological Elements", curated by Claudia Schnugg and Iris Long, Beijing Times Art Museum
Shenzhen, China: "Cosmological Elements", curated by Claudia Schnugg and Iris Long, at China Resources Tower Arts Centre Gallery 2
Chengdu, China: "Cosmic Elements", curated by Claudia Schnugg and Iris Long at Times Art Museum
Vienna, Austria: "Meet the Universe", exhibition of the HEPHY institute (High Energy Physics Institute, Vienna)
Pictures from the exhibition in Shanghai, China
pictures from the exhibition in Bogotá, Colombia
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