Why are we here & where do we come from?

So begins Stardust, Brian Cox's second instalment of the wonderful Wonders of the Universe on BBC One. I highly recommend it and if you have missed it, all three episodes are still available on iPlayer.

The premise of Stardust is that we are all born from the destruction of stars, which sounds far-fetched. But it's not at all. Brian Cox's starting point in Wonders of the Universe is also that of Uma Jakobsdóttir in The Human Race: that every atom in our bodies was once part of ...