Journey to the stars: Other cosmic bodies in the firmament

NOT all objects bright and sunny in the firmament are stars. Stars emit light because of chemical reactions taking place within them. Stars have burning (reacting) gases out of which white light is emitted. To the contrary, quite a diversity of cosmic objects is different from the stars that light up the night sky.

The stars in the heavens are not of the same age. Some are considerably older than others are. The solar system is thought to be younger than other stars, constellations and galaxies running into billions) of years, after which they will have their surface temperatures lowering. After that, they will relapse into red stars, and ultimately peter out. Some people are already beginning to panic when the expected time of celestial death runs into billions of years.

We may not be the first inhabitants of planets such as the Earth to have perished. Life is never quite eternal, save in relative terms. These days there is palpable fear of us human beings, being run over and swamped by aliens from deep space. Armageddon is becoming reality to some people — given the solar flares that are becoming more and more common and the asteroids are having some close shave with our Earth.

Elon Musk, whose name never gets mention in the community of the poor, has good reason to worry. If aliens do manage to land on Earth, that means they have more advanced technology than we have. However, those who have nothing do not have justifiable reason to run scared like headless chickens. Those with nothing do not fear to lose anything, as they have nothing.

It seems there is some rush to find habitable planets and exoplanets where human beings will find refuge when aliens go on a rampaging crusade and turn us into their servants to draw water and fetch wood for them. Space explorations are getting more and more advanced in the light of powerful telescopes such as Hubble that peer deep into space and reveal promising prospects for the adventurous humans. Space stations have been established and continue to probe into deep space.

Evidence of life is beginning to emerge particularly in the moons that orbit the planets. Mars, a cosmic body once considered a red planet is showing evidence of water. Jupiter’s moons, Ganymede and Calisto are equally yielding promise of life especially in the subsurface below the icy surface layer. Planet Saturn’s moons, Titan and Enceladus are being probed and initial indications are that there might be life out there within the Solar System. That is good news for the Columbus and Da Gama-minded people.

Planets do not emit light of their own. Instead, they reflect light resulting from celestial chemical reactions. Their temperatures allow life to exist as in the liquid form. High orbital precision characteristic of planets ensures that the planets do not get closer to the sun or farther away from the sun. Mutual repulsion and attraction obviate against this disastrous prospect. When either takes place, there are calamitous repercussions.

When Earth, for example, gets nearer to the sun, its temperature will increase considerably with dire consequences for the lives of species on the planet. That may lead to the glaciers that are presently holding a lot of water in the Polar Regions would melt, with the resultant rise in sea and ocean levels. Coastal areas would drown with the coastline moving more and inland.

On the other hand, when Earth moves farther away from the sun, it will experience a cooling effect which may usher the cold Ice Age. I certainly would be among the first to kiss Mother Earth goodbye. Sometimes we underestimate the degree of precision regarding the distances between the sun and the planets orbiting around it. It is a very delicate balancing act. The Mayan people have stone walls that are characterised by a precision that will not allow an object as thin as a razor blade to slip through the rock joints of their stonewalls. When we disturb the cosmic balance in the firmament, we run the risk of perishing through selfinflicted injury.

The majority of us need not worry about cataclysmic events that lie several years into the unforeseeable future when stars are estimated to undergo a supernova. Stars can be so bright we cannot gaze at them. I have observed something about schoolteachers’ reactions to pupils who do well in their written work. “You are a star!” A teacher will shower a bright pupil with untrammelled praise. A star is bright in terms of the light it emits, as explained above.

Beyond the verbal accolades, the teacher showers on the bright pupils, he will literally draw stars. The drawing of the stars has attracted my attention. We know stars and planets are circular in form. Yet what teachers draw and pass as stars is far from the reality of stars, as we know it. The stars that we draw are the same as the star we find on the Zimbabwean flag. In fact, there is more than one star on the flag — a complete one and another represented by a triangle that is a portion of a star. We draw a star that is far from being representative of the heavenly stars. A close look at the full star on the Zimbabwean flag will reveal that it consists of joined up open triangles. It translates to repeated triangles that is one of the elements found in the firmament and has become one of the elements of African aesthetics.

What is the connection or link between a chevron star that we draw and a real star that is circular? I will argue that physical eyes see much less than the more perceptive mental eyes. I have always wondered whether we see the same things when we look at our national flag. Interestingly, there are numerous similarities between the national flag and Amagugu flag with the chevron design being the common denominator that has an Afrocentric interpretation in most, if not all parts of black Africa.

A careful scrutiny of a drawn star will reveal that it is a re-arranged or reconfigured chevron design. In the case of the Zimbabwean flag, the star is drawn within a bigger white triangle. It is, in reality, a portion of a star, a triangle on the body of woman that demarcates the all-important tissue, the womb that effects continuity, perpetuity, eternity and endlessness of the human species. Sexuality is at the heart of the endlessness of the human and, indeed, other species be they flora or and fauna.

Stellar brightness has found its way into the imagery used when we refer to a king who in Africa is regarded as the sun (ilanga), the star around which planets, the ordinary beings, orbit. The imagery or metaphor is used in reference and reverence to a king. The king is symbolised as the sun, the brightest and the nearest of all stars and the centre of the orbiting planets. The power and aura of a king is symbolised as the sun, the king of stars, at least from our viewpoint. There are in reality stars bigger and brighter than our own sun. However, they are farther away than our sun.

The death of a king may be termed the setting of a sun. I penned a book bearing that title in reference to King Lobengula, the sun that set when we still needed its warmth and light. The book gives the various accounts regarding the fate of the last Ndebele monarch.

In addition to stars, planets and moons there are other cosmic bodies within the firmament. The one class worthy of note relates to the asteroids that from time to time collide with the surface of the Earth causing in their wake emergence of big craters some of which are below sea level, covered in sedimentary rocks.

We are going to devote the next article to the asteroids as one of them is thought to have resulted in the extinction of dinosaurs at the end of the Cretaceous Era, about six million years ago.