Journey to the stars: Searching for new lands and unpacking the concept of eternity

ONCE upon a time, I was young, but not a baby. At that age music seemed to access the inner accesses of my and other youngsters’ hearts. Music swayed our bodies, our hearts, and our souls. How right the leading English wordsmith William Shakespeare was. “If music be the food of love, play on.”

Later I would learn about music, or some special kind of sound that knocked and opened the doors of Heaven. I would see music, not just as any type of sound, the but one that is an integral part of all religions and forms of spirituality ranging from the two book religions, Christianity and Islam to African Spirituality. Music is one phenomenon that was/is embraced by every religion or spirituality on Earth. All of them, without exception, embraced organised, regular and rhythmic sounds in their worship or propitiation.

In my days of youthful vitality, I was never counted among those who played soccer. Certainly, I was among dancers of note, especially when I removed my shirt. I remember vividly when I was a teacher of science at Loreto Mission where we danced to some song titled “Get Ready.” It was thirteen minutes long. Marvelous Madimu and I watched many develop rivulets globules of silvery sweat on their brows and bodies, eventually succumbing to near fatigue. We endured the heat and danced to the end by which time it was just the two of us — the two young men standing. We became the envied centre of attraction just like the sun in the solar system where it is surrounded by less glamorous planets.

Seeing, as I am writing about stars, what is the relevance of this introduction to the ongoing articles on the theme of stars and the journey to them. Things as glamorous as stars would not have failed to find their way into the litany of various arts genres such as music, poetry and drawing, inter alia. In the early stages of this journey to the stars, I referred to a poetic rendition titled, “Twinkle, twinkle little star.” The poem seems to defy age as it refuses to abandon lips of the young.

I still remember with some sense of abandon a line in a song which went something like this, “Don’t you know that you are a shooting star?” I had to be reminded by someone of my age that the song that ignited our souls was sung by Bad Company. Our bodies were very receptive to music and moved accordingly. I was happy when recently I read a book on the arts where the author said the world is characterised by actions — movement, change and energy. With advanced and advancing age, one begins to see relationships more than isolated incidents and actions. This may be the reason why wisdom inhabits old mature minds, though not the senile ones of course. Such minds choose to deal in a holistic approach and see a fuller picture.

This takes me to the promise I made last week. I intimated I would deal with the concept of eternity. It is a concept that I have delved into over several years. It was a concept I related to for quite some time in terms of continuity, endlessness and perpetuity with regard to stone/rock, circularity, spirituality, sexuality and some decorative motifs such as the spiral, herringbone, dentelle, whorl and the circle itself.

I have come to learn that as we learn more and more and observe nature more and more keenly our minds develop even more. Study allows our minds to interact with more advanced ideas embedded in nature. Out of the cognitive interaction and intercourse, our minds emerge different, having extended the horizons of their knowledge.

However, suppose our minds lived forever, what would be the result of development of human minds? More and more vexatious issues would be delved into and understood with greater clarity and depth. My ideas of eternity have not stagnated either. An active mind does not stagnate. Instead, it seeks a clearer insight and understanding into more issues.

Now that I know something about the age of stars and that they do die, I have had to develop different paradigms premised on more current information and knowledge. Now I no longer believe that stars are eternal. They do get to the stage of a supernova — when a star eventually dies as its burning gases begin to deplete. A red star dies when its external temperature cools down and the star seizes to emit white light. The hottest objects emit light that is white whereas less hot objects emit red light. The supply of burning gases is finite, so are the chemical reactions responsible for the production of heat.

So, the planets and stars will eventually die, albeit not all of them at once but at different times. Death, I have argued, is the source of life. Flora and fauna feed on death — on dead matter. One thing that we know is possessed by matter is energy that is indestructible. Energy changes from one form to another. For example, potential energy (energy due to position) may be converted to kinetic energy (energy of movement) when an object is released and comes down under the force of gravity. Chemical reactions involving gases in a star release heat and light, among other forms of energy.

Even in our bodies, there is chemical energy. There is the element known as phosphorus, which underwrites life. Phosphates, the critical components in the RNA (ribonucleic acid) and the DNA (di-ox nucleic acid), which are important for life. These contain phosphates built from phosphorus. Scientists are getting more and more hopeful that after all there are possible forms of life in other planets such as the moon (Eladanus) revolving around the planet Saturn.

Traces of liquid water have been detected below some planets’ icy surfaces. This soothes my heart, as I have never believed that we are the only human beings in the whole wide and burgeoning universe or the multi-verse, as some people prefer to call it. I remain optimistic that contact with what we term aliens in outer space will be made in due course.

Moreover, when that contact is made, it will not be the first time it is happening. I am one who believes that this our world has in the past been visited by people(aliens) from other cosmic bodies (either planets or stars), for example the gods from Nibiru who came here in search of minerals such as copper but more particularly gold which they shipped back to their star using spaceships. Evidence of the design of the spaceships abounds as petroglyphs in some protected caves in various parts of the world. Civilisation did not start with modern man!

The Shona word Chitundumuseresere referred to the spaceships in use in ancient times. It is being used in reference to the airplanes and spaceships in latter day civilisations. Some of you may remember the term in reference to a song sung during the heyday of Zapu. Joshua Nkomo, the Zapu leader, was referred to in the nationalist song. Iraq is thought to have been one place where the said spaceships landed and took off to the stars in outer space (emkhathini).

History repeats itself. Now there are many countries that are sending discovery space ships to the planets within the solar system, to the planetary moons orbiting the planets and beyond. This, in essence, is nothing new. Men who sought to discover new lands existed and they were driven by the insatiable desire to find more land where to settle and extract resources to drive the industrial revolution. We are exactly in the same mode today — albeit venturing to the planets and planetary moons. The search continues. How will Africans fare in all this cut-throat competition to explore the heavens — the journey to the planets and moons and ultimately beyond?

What we are really arguing is that everything material, concrete and tangible will, in the final analysis, end. As far as these materials are concerned, there is no eternity, no forever and ever-Amen for them. Energy may be a different kettle of fish. Spirituality belongs in the same class. When everything else including the stars planets and moons end, energy mat be the enduring phenomenon. Was it not the presence of energy that preceded physical, concrete and material things when the universe came into being more than 14 billion years ago?