Looking upwards

Well I'll begin with probably the most poetic thing I know of in science and that is that we are all made of stars. The atoms in your right hand most likely came from a different star than the atoms in your left, a truly amazing thought. Our home star, the sun, thought to be one of the brightest in our galaxy blazes with an intensity unimaginable to us (can you really imagine anything over 200 degrees, never mind 5000?). it seems to me paradoxical that it is this ball of fire with it's potential for unrivaled destruction that is the giver of all life and all things beautiful on our little rock in space. The energy that formed every chemical bond in every molecule in your body came from this great benefactor.

It is easy to see why our sun has been the subject of worship for so many, if not most, past religions. It's surely something that deserves a little of our praise. It is believed among astronomers that the planets in our solar system were formed after a huge supernova around five billion years ago crashed into a nearby cloud of gas, space dust. Gravitational forces went to work bringing together our star into existence. Residual dust around the sun then began to clump together from grains, to lumps, boulders and eventually to planets. From this incredibly simplified history I would think it is not too much of a leap to say that the sun and our planet (and by extension you and I) share a common ancestor and we are as much a part of the the sun as it is a part of us. Perhaps from this logic intelligent life elsewhere in the universe would classify us not by race but by star.

Astronomy to me is the most humbling of all my academic pursuits by far and a topic I'll probably talk more of in this blog as it highlights the undeniable fact that we are very, very small. This is something I think of occasionally when confronted with worries around my daily life. It gives me comfort to know that this isn't all there is, an absurd thought when pointed out but none the less is a feeling I sometimes get during troubled times. Looking upwards gives me hope. There's a whole universe out there.