Introduction
Most people wonder how the world was created. Until very recently there were
no clear answers to this question. Religion and philosophy provided some answers
but these were based on faith or intuition, and as such lacking scientific
confirmation based on evidences and experimentation.
Let us take the simple case of the earth. Until the 16th century it was believed at different times in history that it was flat, immobile in the sky, the centre of the universe, created from nothing by God, etc. Science finally proved that all these views were wrong except god's creation. Of course, science was not able, and will never be, to show what God's intervention was. For a long time religions in general, and the Christian churches in particular, insisted that God created everything and those who disagreed were severely punished. Fortunately now, people are free to believe what they want although there are still some religious fundamentalists who would like to impose their views.
If we leave apart the religious views on the subject, the earth, like many similar celestial stars, planets, etc. is the result of the explosion of a massive star -30 to 100 times the mass of the sun. The explosion creates supernovas and disperses chemical elements in the universe. These chemical elements got together under the action of gravity creating in this way new smaller stars, as well as its inhabitants in the case of the earth. Following this recycling we can say that we are "children of the stars."