Stars as Ghosts

This sweet little fellow is a Yucatan Banded Gecko. He is one of the many beautiful things you can find only at night while being quiet and still. My class spotted him while in the Coxcomb Jaguar Sanctuary in Belize. Sooo cute!

Today, I realized I was homesick for New Orleans. It's a strange feeling--I can't remember ever longing for a "home," I've never even felt like I had a home since my family moved around a lot when I was younger. I often miss family and friends when I go to new places, but never do I miss an entire place or a collective group of people. Sure enough, I began to miss riding my bike to Neutral Ground coffeehouse to read, drink a pot of tea, listen to live music and talk with some of the most intriguing people. I missed my front porch and the dynamic of my old house with roommates who couldn't have been more perfect. I missed red beans and rice Mondays, sunsets over the wetlands and Cajun accents.

After having realized what I was feeling, I decided to take a bike ride through my dad's neighborhood to clear my head. Often times, people take a "drive" when they're upset. Bike riding, however, lets you feel the night breeze, hear the crickets and frogs, catch glimpses of families of deer, get exercise and look up at the Texas night sky. Surely these things are more cleansing than the stressful and eco-inefficient catharsis of driving.

And, though I still miss New Orleans, I couldn't believe how open and clear the sky was on this evening bike ride. I hadn't seen the stars while I was in New Orleans, as the city lights and life were always burning into the night. While looking up, I started to wonder why so many people can feel comforted and overwhelmed by the stars.

What exactly are stars? I know they're burning balls of gas, and that they're huge and [in a galaxy] far, far away. I know looking into them is like looking back in time, as it takes a long time for the light of the stars to reach us here on earth. One of my friends once told me if we were to put a giant mirror far out with the stars, we'd be able to look back in time on earth, too. To be precise, stars are giant balls of gas held together by their own gravity. Gravity, keep in mind, is that physical law that gives weight and pressure in order to keep things in tact. There are phases in a star's life characterized by the gravitation forces keeping it together and its interaction with the pressure of hot gas and/or radiation from inside the star's core.

As I was riding my bike tonight, I was amazed by how much I could actually see despite the lack of streetlights in a heavily wooded neighborhood. So I began to ask myself why it is that stars shine and how stars can produce light that burns bright enough to be seen 4.3+ light years away. The answer: nuclear fusion. Fusion is the process in which lighter atoms combine with one another to form heavier atoms. Think about relationships. Nuclear fusion is like when two formerly single people get together and form one union. Two is bigger (heavier) than one, and this process of uniting can expel a whole lotta energy (passion, love, what have you). So because stars are literally giant hot burning balls of gas, the converting of energy (nuclear fusion) releases a whole lot of excess energy that we on earth see as light. Depending on the temperature in the center a star, fusion can happen through a number of ways. This is like how we have different understandings of love and relationships at different ages and levels of maturity in our lives: we may all be people just as stars are always stars, but all things are constantly changing.

As far as the night sky being a literal map of history, our galaxy (Milky Way) is about 100,000 light years across. Since light travels at 186,000 miles (3oo,oookm) per second, it can take light from the stars tens of thousands of years to reach us on earth. Even more so, stars outside of our galaxy can take up to millions of years to see . Quasars, the farthest stars we can see, can take billions of years to see. Thus, a lot of what we see in the night sky are ghosts--that is, mere reflections of what is no longer alive.

So. If you start to feel homesick, stressed or maybe just in need of fresh air, I suggest taking a night bike ride. Even if you can't see the stars from where you live, try to listen for all the sounds you hear. What do you find comforting in the night?

And, if you want to learn more about the stars, I read up on the stars for my blog entry at nasa's education page here.