 came from the almost impossible to imagine heat of now very long dead stars and that's all we got and that's all we're going to get and so they're part of every story the world's ever written every story the world will ever write townsend is a biogeochemist a scientist who studies the major elements that make up life around us stardust is part of his work but his knowledge of it extends beyond his work it's also part of his new book appropriately called this ordinary stardust