Sun Spots and Coffee

Oh, how we have missed you sunspots. Lo this past decade you have been absent from our local celestial orb of gas, and now, at last, you have returned to bless us with your static and discharges of plasma. Have you ever looked at videos of the sun and watched the mountains of molten gas the size of our entire planet bubbling up and sinking down like static on an old television? Sure, there are conspiracy theories suggesting that these videos are just amber-colored static on a television screen, but I like to think of them as real actual videos of the sun’s surface. The sun is a noisy place. It’s a good thing we can’t hear it. We wouldn’t hear anything else.

I like to think about stars over my morning coffee, and how they go supernova when they begin fusing iron. Coffee doesn’t assist with the process of iron production, but it makes me think about it anyway. Coffee is actually known to decrease the absorption of iron in the Human body, but it doesn’t do much for stars. Iron is death to a star. Once a star starts producing iron, it has only seconds to live. The fusion process in the core can’t sustain the production of iron, and without the pressure from that process, (I’m not sure if you’d call it pressure really) they collapse and everything goes sinking down. Zip-BANG! That collapse reignites everything on a massive scale, one that only exists for a few seconds. All the other elements up from iron are produced as a result of that explosion. That’s why those elements are so rare. The explosion blasts those elements out, seeding the galaxy. Got a gold ring? It was most likely formed in a supernova explosion. We don’t know of any other natural way gold is formed. You’ve got to love supernovas. We’re all made of bits and pieces of them. That’s how Sagan used to put it. He used to say, “We’re all made of star stuff.”

So now that it’s tax day, and the world is currently embroiled in conflicts from top to bottom, and the various components of the government structures are sniping at each other and Humans’ are going about the general everyday task of being Human, it’s a good time to think about stars and put things into perspective. Our problems, no matter how monumental they seem to be, don’t matter to the stars. The stars just don’t care. They go on fusing hydrogen anyway. It’s a good thing too. We’d be in deep trouble if they didn’t. Tomorrow is just another day. The sun will continue to shine, and the Earth will continue to rotate. Lots of stuff will happen tomorrow, and most of it will be happening in places other than on Earth. But we won’t know about it because we’ll be here, dealing with Human stuff. And we’ll probably think that’s important. More important than anything else. But really, is it? Really-really?