Your Atoms' Résumé
Not one atom in you is originally yours. Enter your weight and read where they all worked before — some in the sea, some in a dinosaur, all of them in the Big Bang or a dying star.
The Atoms On Loan To You
| Element | Atoms | Share | Origin |
|---|
Not one atom in you was made by you, or on Earth. You are assembled entirely from the hand-me-downs of the Big Bang and dead stars.
Atom count from a standard estimate of ~7×10²⁷ atoms for a 70 kg body, scaled to your weight. Element fractions are atomic-percent averages and vary from person to person. The deep-time placements are probabilistic: atoms recycle constantly through air, water, and living things, so while no single atom can be traced, these histories are overwhelmingly likely. "A dinosaur" is shorthand for the Mesozoic biosphere, not one specific animal.
About This Toy
Your Atoms' Résumé takes a fact that should be on every billboard — that you are a temporary arrangement of unimaginably old, borrowed atoms — and writes it up as a CV. You give it your weight; it works out roughly how many atoms you're currently made of, breaks them down by element, and lists the long, strange career each of them had before reporting to you.
The headline figures are real. A body your size contains a number of atoms with 27 or 28 zeros after it. Around 62% of them, by count, are hydrogen made in the first few minutes after the Big Bang. The rest — your carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, calcium — were fused inside stars that died before the Sun existed, then blown across the galaxy. And because atoms are endlessly recycled through air, water, and life, it is a near-certainty that some of yours once moved through the bodies of the Mesozoic. You really are, in the most literal sense, secondhand.
How It Works
- Enter your weight and choose kilograms or pounds.
- The toy multiplies out your atom count and splits it across the elements that make you, each tagged with where it was forged.
- Read the employment history from the top down — present day back to 13.8 billion years ago, the first three minutes of the universe.
- Note the twist in the Provenance section: most of your atoms are Big Bang hydrogen, yet most of your weight was made in stars.
Why This Exists
We talk about ourselves as if we begin at birth and are made of ourselves. Neither is true at the atomic level. Every atom in you predates you by billions of years and will outlast you by billions more; you are renting them, briefly, in a particularly elaborate arrangement. Carl Sagan's famous line about being made of star stuff is not poetry — it is a manifest, and this toy is an attempt to print it.
There's a strange comfort in it. Nothing about you, materially, is lost when you're gone — the atoms simply update their résumé and take the next position. You are a job they're currently doing, and a very temporary one.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Your Atoms' Résumé?
A free toy that turns the atoms in your body into a CV. You enter your weight, and it estimates how many atoms you contain and lists the jobs they held before you — from the Big Bang to the inside of dying stars to, very probably, a dinosaur.
How many atoms are in my body?
About 7 octillion — a 7 followed by 27 zeros — for a 70 kg person, scaling roughly with your weight. That is more atoms than there are stars in a hundred thousand Milky Ways.
Were my atoms really inside a star?
Yes. Every atom heavier than hydrogen — your carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, calcium — was forged by nuclear fusion inside stars that lived and died before the Sun was born, then scattered by supernovae. By weight, nearly 90% of you was made in stars.
Were any of my atoms in a dinosaur?
Almost certainly. Atoms are endlessly recycled through air, water, and living things, so over a hundred million years the odds that none of your carbon or water atoms ever passed through Mesozoic life are vanishingly small. We can't point to a specific T. rex, but the cycle makes it a near certainty.
Do I need to install anything?
No. Your Atoms' Résumé runs entirely in your browser. There is no download, no signup, and no account. Enter a weight and read.
Does it work on mobile?
Yes. It works on any modern mobile browser, including Chrome, Safari, and Firefox. The résumé reflows to fit your screen.
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