Half the atoms of our bodies are from a distant galaxy.

A recent study by Northwestern University in the United States revealed that half of the atoms that make up our human body may have come beyond the Milky Way.

These atoms would have traveled here through intergalactic winds driven by large explosive stars, such as supernovae, astronomers say.

After creating detailed 3D models of the galaxies, the Northwestern team concluded that powerful supernova explosions can ferret trillions of tons of atoms into space so ferociously that they escape the gravitational pull of their native galaxy and move to larger, larger neighbors. clouds that travel at hundreds of kilometers per second.

Considered a celestial old woman, the Milky Way probably formed about 13 billion years ago. Its building blocks are thought to be continually recycled, where much of the hydrogen and helium that falls in the galaxies form new stars, while heavier elements, created in stars and dispersed in violent detonations, become the raw material for construction of comets and asteroids, planets and life.

"But we don't realize how much of today's Milky Way mass was actually stolen from the winds of other galaxies, " says study co-author Claude-André Faucher-Giguère.

In the end, as that song by singer Moby was saying, "We are all made of stars".