• lledrtx@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      8 months ago

      Is that joke that on a cosmic level, it’s mostly hydrogen and helium (?) so others get ignored, like how genders other than the usual 2 get ignored? If so, that’s so smart and funny, wow.

      Or is it something else that I’m not getting?

      • Deconceptualist@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        8 months ago

        Yep. Cosmologists work at the largest scale and often simplify regular matter down to hydrogen (“gas”) and everything else (“metal”).

        So if you ever see a reference to the “metallicity” of a star, that can include the presence of carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, etc… which chemists of course would never refer to as metals.