Stars

Silver speckles sprinkled onto your sleeping blanket, giving life to your otherwise boring nightscape: Those are your stars. Some shine brighter than others, thus we notice them more than their neighbors. Some shine so bright that we feel they are so close thus we know them much; in reality they’re so far away.

Stars form their existence from the particles around them, either those produced by the big bang, or remnants of other stars. The conglomeration of these particles are triggered usually by a dying star- the energy from the explosion serves as the spark to get them living. After that they start burning those material and shining them away to everyone around, including you and me. Sometimes they shine too much it’s blinding, others just shine pleasantly. Such is the form of stars we are usually familiar of. Known are the stars to people in general, being shiny as they are. Some of us even think we cannot live without them and admire them big-time. They are what we call fans, but they are of another topic.

Some stars become forgotten, outshone by brighter ones. They are still there, though not that shiny anymore (dwarfs). These usually happen to small-time stars that did not accumulate much material to burn during their ‘formative’ stages. They spend their lives burning whatever that is left of them, before ultimately disintegrating into its surrounding, perhaps to be reborn as another star.

Some go with a bang. This happens to stars with a huge mass, accumulated by years of patience. Tears of pure energy and screams of matter abound the mourning of such a great star. But more importantly, the energy and particles released by this explosion triggers the formation, and serve as material for other stars to be, respectively, as mentioned before. For this, they will never be forgotten; their explosions reach the corners of the universe (if such exists) and will continue to shine through other stars they gave rise to.

The last is rather sad. After the dirges of energy and particles, something more happens: these stars turn inward and become an immense gravity well. Black holes are sour grapes. They suck things around them: other stars’ light, particles of every imaginable kind, and other stuff, including you and me (again). No one knows what black holes do with those things they’ve sucked. As a principle, no star can ever be born in a black hole’s vicinity due to the lack of material and stable gravitational field. Everyone merely remembers black holes for the suckers they are, not for the stars they were. Sad, isn’t it?

Stars come, stars go. It doesn’t matter if you’re not shiny now, as long as you won’t suck later. ▪