Without cobalt, we would suffer from anemia and our bodies would tingle with pins and needles. It also helps form the myelin sheaths protecting our nerve cells. Part of vitamin B12, cobalt helps ensure we produce red blood cells to carry oxygen to muscles, organs and bones. To be conscious, we need cobalt, which gives glass a radiant blue color. Compared to the relatively short time our consciousness occupies one of their creations, the elements always have been and always will be.

At a more basic level, this means that the atoms that compose our bodies, which swirl and spin and flow through us to give us energy and make us who we are in tens of thousands of different ways, have been around for billions of years. Physicists tell us these items, once created, cannot be changed or destroyed (except under the extreme conditions of stars and black holes). This biochemical process depends on atoms and ions. It turns out that the electron transport chain is just the mystifying tip of an improbability iceberg so enormous as to be nearly ineffable. A practicing Catholic, Brenda told me that the more she learned about how our bodies work, the more awed she was by God’s creation. One of the lab’s doctoral students concurred. Given the genius way ETC utilizes electrons, for days I couldn’t believe I was actually walking around. This complicated process, which uses digested sugars to create an ion gradient that acts like a hydroelectric station for producing cellular fuel, has more belts and levers than a Rube Goldberg machine and can twist the mind like an M.C. I first learned about our body’s electron transport chain ( ETC) while working in a biochemistry lab.

Goldilocks galaxy