Sun

Then God said, "let there be light" and there was light - Genesis 

 

When was the last time you looked up at the heavens? The celestial bodies are truly beautiful, unfathomable which is why we believe in a God. If you happen to travel through the villages of India in the early hours of the day, you will see bare bodied people - symbolic that we are all equal in the eyes of God - offering prayers to the Sun God. The sun is truly beautiful, a huge ball suspended in the sky, the entire world wakes up to the sun; humans, insects, animals, everyone draws energy from the sun. When you feel the warm glow on your skin, remember that it is the effect of photons which have travelled 150 million kilometers from the sun at the speed of light to touch your skin.  

All of nature works on balance, our body works on balance or homeostasis. If you have been for a medical test, you will see the narrow range within which our body controls the different functions like blood pressure, sugar levels, etc. and that is why religions preach against any form of temptation, it is a way to bring balance to our life and to assist our body and mind in its functioning. A star too is the result of a balance of forces; the force of gravity, the force of nuclear fusion and when this happens, we see cosmic magic, the star lights up, spreads its warmth and embraces planets. Similarly, it is with us, just like planets are connected to a star, we too are connected to the divine.  

Our sun is a medium sized second or third generation star which means that an earlier bigger star exploded, and our sun was formed from this explosion. Our sun gives us light, and it is because of the sun that we see our world in a spectrum of colors. When light falls on an object, example a tomato, the tomato absorbs most of the light and reflects some of it which is red, if all light is absorbed by the object, you will see black and if all light is reflected then it will be white. Our sun is an absolute marvel of creation, creation is laws, laws are mathematical equations and that is how Einstein was able to describe the working of the sun through his famous equation e=mc^2. Everything in our world is made up of atoms and that includes the mighty sun as well. Atoms are the smallest particles that make up matter, atoms are made up of protons, neutrons and electrons. 

Our sun consists largely of hydrogen and helium atoms, a hydrogen atom consists of one electron which orbits the nucleus which contains the proton, expose the atom to a high burst of energy and the electron will jump orbit away from the nucleus, expose it to even higher energy levels and the electron can leave the atom, and this is what happens at the core of the sun. The mass of our sun is huge and creates stupendous gravity which pulls the hydrogen atoms to its core and in the process, because of the high energy it also strips the electrons from the atoms leaving just the nuclei and due to the tremendous pressure, the nuclei jam together at the core of the sun. When two nuclei fuse together, we have what is called thermonuclear fusion, voila. The amazing thing about nuclear fusion is that even though it requires a huge amount of energy in the form of gravity to start it and which is provided by the suns mass, the energy released through nuclear fusion is huge as well and balances the gravitational pull of the sun thereby keeping the sun stable.  

To understand the energy that is released during nuclear fusion, we come to Einstein’s famous equation e=mc^2. When two nuclei A and B fuse together its mass will not be equal to A + B because some mass escapes and this mass which escapes is converted into energy which is defined by the equation e (energy) = m (the mass which escaped) * square of the speed of light (speed of light = 186282 miles/sec) Now you can see that even for a small mass there is a huge amount of light energy. The sun shines bright. And God said let there be light and there was light!! Congratulations, pat your back, remember you are one of the very few people on this planet who understands Einstein’s famous equation e=mc^2 

When a large star burns up all its fuel (about 10 billion years) it will expand drastically to about 100 times its present size and explode in a colorful dazzle of colors and light known as the planetary Nebula. This dramatic death and cosmic display is beautiful in its symbolism that the heavens rejoice the birth of new stars, planets and probably life. It is at the core of a star that the atoms combine with free moving electrons to produce heavier atoms like carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, silver etc. which are the basic building blocks of life. Nuclear fusion can only happen in large stars and the star must die for habitable planets and life to form. 

In about 5 billion years, our sun will burn up all its fuel causing it to expand significantly and become a red giant star before eventually dying and shrinking into a white dwarf. Today we spend trillions of dollars building sophisticated nuclear weapons with the objective to kill our own kind. No other creature on this planet has planned for such large-scale destruction of its own kind. Five billion years is a long time, we may evolve, we may find resources for faster modes of transport to reach habitable planets, or we may go extinct like the dinosaurs or through self-destruction and nuclear weapons seems the most likely cause for human extinction.  

This knowledge led to the development of nuclear weapons, culminating in the detonation of the first atomic bomb over Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. The explosion, resulting from the fission of mere fractions of uranium, annihilated an entire city in an instant, killing approximately 80,000 people. By the year’s end, radiation exposure had claimed thousands more lives. 

Decades later, the Chernobyl disaster of April 26, 1986, demonstrated the catastrophic consequences of nuclear energy mishandled. Explosions at Reactor 4 of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant released an unprecedented amount of radiation into the atmosphere. Within days, the radioactive contamination spread across Europe and beyond, reaching as far as India, the United States, and Canada. The long-term effects of this disaster persist, serving as a grim reminder of the dangers associated with nuclear technology. 

Throughout history, religious and philosophical texts have warned humanity of the consequences of unchecked ambition. The story of Adam and Eve serves as an allegory for the perils of acquiring knowledge without wisdom. In the pursuit of power and control, humanity has created weapons capable of annihilating entire civilizations. Yet, the Earth has always provided abundantly for its inhabitants—there is enough for everyone. The challenge lies in ensuring that wisdom prevails over recklessness, and that the knowledge we possess is used to sustain, rather than destroy, the world entrusted to us.