There were a lot of ingredients that went into assembling your mind and body. As you’d imagine, there is plenty of carbon, oxygen, and a certain amount of pumpkin spice in every being.
Most of these substances serve very obvious purposes. They may provide building blocks for bone and muscle or facilitate certain chemical transactions that keep you alive.
But there are other elements present and we have no clue what they add to the recipe. Rubidium, the chemical element Rb, is one such coy stranger. It’s the most plentiful substance in your body that scientists haven’t found a biological purpose for. Does that mean it’s meaningless?
Science may not be able to figure out this puzzle, but maybe it’s an enigma we can unpack in our journals. If you had to assign meaning to this mystery ingredient, what would it be?
Can you come up with an unexplainable aspect of the human condition that we might blame on Rubidium? Is it a critical component in unexplained emotions like hope or faith? Does it attach to sad thoughts to keep them from overwhelming us?
The Metal That Runs Through Our Veins
Rubidium, like all elements, including pumpkin spice, is formed in the heart of stars. As a star burns through its supply of hydrogen, the star core begins assembling heavier compounds.
Elements like iron or rubidium condense and then get shot across the universe by supernovae. As those ingredients eventually clump together again across the wasteland, planets, asteroids, rocks, and our bodies coalesce.
Rubidium is an alkali metal that flakes whitish-grey. Yet, in heat just above body temperature, Rubidium collapses into liquid. So what’s it doing in our bodies? Why was a dash of this unremarkable element added to our irises, our brains, and our tissue?
Maybe the following clues can help inspire a few theories or journal entries about Rubidium’s ultimate destiny:
- Rubidium flashes purple in some fireworks.
- It’s used in photocells that detect light. It may operate your outdoor security light that automatically flips on at sundown to keep out the dark.
- Rubidium has been explored as a fuel for ion engines for spacecraft.
- It’s used to create vacuum conditions.
- Rubidium helps living cells open up to accept new DNA.
- The earth stores Rubidium around Bernic Lake, Canada, and the Italian Isle of Elba.
Mining Our Bodies for Journaling Prompts
Perhaps the most amazing science flash fact is that your body keeps rubidium on hand for no reason in particular. At least we’ve yet to assign a function to it. Perhaps it’s a critical element for something we haven’t noticed.
Perhaps it’s a key component for our next stage of development. Maybe it fuels intuition, allowing you to make that choice that saved your life that one time in Florida. Maybe the rubidium in your core reacts only with the metal in the core of your soulmate.
Perhaps our rubidium storehouse can help us catch up to the stars one day and trace the birthplaces of the elements locked in our bodies.
Maybe give it some thought over coffee or while milling across a forest floor. There are still mysteries in the cold, dead centers of former stars. Just as there are still conundrums in the makeup of our delicate bodies.
Maybe to get answers on the strange inclusion of this gray alkali in our fingers and toes, we have to think outside the box. Do you have to remove all Rubidium from a body to see its effect? Let’s hope we can find more eloquent and safer methods in the paper-thin labs of our journals. End
I wrote about meeting yourself in a black hole in another spaced-out journal prompt. Also, watch this space for sales on my handcrafted Rubidium jewelry.