Stars

A star: "a massive, luminous ball of plasma" whose incandescence arises from nuclear fusion in its core, producing radiation which then travels outward into space. At its inception, a star is nothing more than a "collapsing cloud" of hydrogen, along with helium and a sprinkling of heavier elements. Then, after achieving sufficient density at its core, the star converts some of its hydrogen into helium through the aforementioned nuclear fusion. Energy is siphoned away from the core "through a combination of radiation and convective processes. These processes keep the star from collapsing upon itself and the energy generates a stellar wind at the surface and radiation into outer space. Once the hydrogen fuel at the core is exhausted, a star of at least 0.4 times the mass of the Sun expands to become a red giant, fusing heavier elements at the core, or in shells around the core. It then evolves into a degenerate form, recycling a portion of the matter into the interstellar environment where it will form a new generation of stars with a higher proportion of heavy elements."^*

And you thought they just twinkled in the night sky.^†

But, thousands of years ago, stars were more than huge, incandescent balls of hydrogen and helium gas spangling the evening sky. They directed sailors, providing them the means to navigate the waters free from the fear of losing their way on the nighttime seas. The ancient Egyptians used the rising of Sirius with the sun as a harbinger of the Nile's annual flooding, around which their entire agricultural system was developed, a system that provided sustenance for the world's first great civilization.


Yet even more powerfully, stars directed people's very lives. Astrologists used these heavenly bodies to tell people what their personalities would be, how long they would live, whom they should marry, when they should travel, what months looked auspicious for business. Stars governed the ungovernable. They gave people answers and ruled their lives.


And tonight, looking up into the sky, I am simply amazed at how many of these stellar sentinals, silent and sure (keeping watch in the night!), I can see. The lights here in the greater Los Angeles metropolitan region typically drown out all but a handful of the brightest stars (some of which are actually probably visible planets like Venus, but I'm so far removed from a culture that scrutinizes the stars that I can't tell a Jupiter from Zeta 1 and Zeta 2 Reticuli). Those stars that aren't being eclipsed by street lamps are usually filtered out by haze.


Yet despite the lucidity of all the stars this evening, they are telling me nothing. I wish the could give me better counsel…[Here the personal version of this entry transitions into personal events that I am neither foolish enough to post, nor arrogant enough to assume people might be interested in.]


…and sometimes, I wish I could trade this difficulty for any other. Then I suppose "maybe God already gave me one 'trade,' and I exchanged paralysis, or a degenerative heart condition, or mental retardation, or Lou Gereick's disease, or something else," and this is what I got. Or alternately, sometimes I imagine will get in a car accident, and become paralyzed, and that will put everything into perspective, that my current problem is actually really small, relative to absolute poverty, or enslavement on a plantation, etc. Then I think, "No, actually, paralysis would just be an additional, larger problem on top of my already big problem. It won't make my existing troubles any smaller. Rather, I would probably just be crushed under the weight of a double burden."

And in the end, on nights like these I feel like prayer might be little more than wishing on the stars, throwing my hopes out there to the powers that be, and wondering whether or not things will go my way.



*Wikipedia, "Stars."

†N.B. The allusion here to "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" is wholly appropriate (and devilishly clever). In fact, the lyrics to this popular nursery rhyme are from the poem "The Star," by 19th century poet Jane Taylor. The poem encapsulates both the Romantacists' fascination with nature and the scientific curiosity that came to govern the 19th century. Note (below) how the speaker "wonder[s]" about the essence of the star. Little would (s)he guess that it's actually a gigantic ball of hydrogen undergoing nuclear fusion billions of miles away.

"The Star"

Twinkle, twinkle, little star,
How I wonder what you are!
Up above the world so high,
Like a diamond in the sky.

When the blazing sun is gone,
When he nothing shines upon,
Then you show your little light,
Twinkle, twinkle, all the night.

Then the traveller in the dark,
Thanks you for your tiny spark:
He could not see which way to go,
If you did not twinkle so.

In the dark blue sky you keep,
And often through my curtains peep,
For you never shut your eye,
Till the sun is in the sky.

As your bright and tiny spark
Lights the traveller in the dark,
Though I know not what you are,
Twinkle, twinkle, little star.
-1806