Global Explorers & Night Skies
Gallery: Night Skies Contest WinnersA clear night sky and a little instruction allows anyone to soar in mind and imagination to the farthest reaches of an enormous universe in which we are but a speck.
Dr. Brian Greene, Columbia University physicist
essay / introspection A Shared Night Sky
By .
Anxious and unsettled, I was finally setting out on my expedition to Cambodia. Nighttime in San Francisco, I saw the full moon shining down on the ocean: a tarnished blue, black and silver with black and brown outlines of the rocks and cliffs. Though illuminated by the moon, I could only make out shapes creating a landscape that I could fill in with my imagination. Each star twinkled like little diamond studs. While my surroundings were not clearly defined, this felt right to me, much like the beginning of my trip, the sky wasn’t explicitly spelled out. There was room to dream of the unknown, room for adventure.
Now home, Cambodia seems so far away, the inescapable heat, vivid countryside, the enchanting culture. Yet, it takes only one moment to bring me back, as I only need to look up into the night sky. I’m able to relive the moment of peace I found in Cambodia. The most wonderful, fulfilling three weeks of my life, I experienced this moment near the end of my trip. As I brushed my teeth in my home-stay, I glanced up at Cambodia’s night sky: full and rich, like deep black velvet. It was so dark, so consuming, but I was really there, present in the moment right alongside the cows, pigs, roosters, dogs, cats, oxen and families in Cambodia. Finally, I was part of the experience and I felt complete. I wasn’t an outsider anymore, it didn’t matter that I didn’t speak the same language or share the same skin color, because for that moment, we all enjoyed the night sky together.
Travel opened my mind to a new perspective. Though it is easy to make judgments of other people, one common thread of humanity, is that people all over the world marvel at the night sky. Ignoring the geopolitical boundaries, the language barriers, the cultural differences, people all come from the same place: stars. Inanimate and distant points in the sky, stars have witnessed our universe for the past 200 million years. Their very existence is a miracle in itself, as they required the perfect “Goldilocks’ Conditions”: lots of matter, the right temperature and tiny variances in density throughout the early universe. Gravity pulls the matter together, atoms collide, heat is produced, all fusing together and, alas, a star is born.
Like travel, and people, stars have a beginning and an end. Stars spend their lifetime fusing hydrogen to produce helium. Once a star reaches 200 million degrees, protons fuse to form carbon, carbon fuses into neon, neon fuses into oxygen, oxygen into silicon, and silicon into iron. Once filled with iron, a star collapses, and its outer layers break off into space, dispersing the newly created elements. All of the other chemical elements after iron are created through supernovae explosions. The creation of elements beyond helium and hydrogen make up only 2% of the atoms in the universe, but these elements are the building blocks for our world, and for life.
