Featured photo The image is a montage and shows a black hole in which a universe is being created.

The Rise and Fall of a Shining Star

Gloriously beautiful and yet doomed to fall

The story of a shining star is also the story of the eternal cycle of growth and decay.

I am a great admirer of the universe and it was actually a physicist who inspired me to write this poem. He regretted so much that the poets of our time could not find words for this incomprehensible beauty full of mystery and secrets that I felt challenged. And indeed, it is no easy task to put this universal drama into words.

I agree with his observation that people have never before had the opportunity to marvel at the beauty and vastness of its mysterious phenomena.

The sheer awe can leave you at a loss for words.

Incidentally, the physicist in question is Michio Kaku.

Leaving aside the fact that a star is long gone by the time our eyes catch sight of it and its death throes are a relic of the past, it is nevertheless a fascinating and at the same time terrifying process because of the tremendous forces that are unleashed. People are rarely allowed to witness the death throes of a star, from a distance of course even if it is less than the blink of an eye of the universe.

Many of us will probably be able to witness such a comprehensive event that will shake an entire universe when Betelgeuse, a star in the constellation Orion blows up into a supernova. We will then be able to observe the drama in our sky with the naked eye over a longer period of time. Some physicists expect this to happen every day.

"The hand of the giantess", which is what her name means, will be impossible to miss.

PROLOGUE

The image shows particles ejected by stars, which help to form the marvellous clouds of gas and dust that make up the Carina Nebula. — _{^{Carina Nebula Panorama from Hubble
Credit: NASA, ESA, N. Smith (U. California, Berkeley) et al., and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)}}

The Fallen Star - A Universal Poem

Only to be a shining star
it has been born out of the nebula
risen from a cosmic seed
to destroy the gloomy weed
Time has blurred the light
before falling into its darkest night
collapsing in a furious blow
the last act of a glorious show
Disrupted into tiniest slivers
no escape from fighting the final struggle
surrendering its sheath in tremorous shivers
which fades away into its dusty shadow side
to spit this cosmic bubble
and gives birth to a celestial child
The last curtain has fallen
caught in the unknown
the seed has sown
from which a new world arises
only to escape from lonely density
and not consumed by naked singularity
At the horizon of nowhere
this point of no return somewhere
a tiny crystal of memory will shine
where it counts for nothing – time
before this tremor brings all being to rumble
and forces an entire universe to tremble
No way out of the galactic storm
dying into a new form
put in a nutshell - endless solidity
ready for a new destiny
Into a galactic blow
and from its echo back out of itself it is thrown
a new world is born
welcome to the show!

For data protection reasons, I do not embed my YouTube videos.

Thumbnail YouTube Verlinkung zum Gedicht "Vom Werden und Vergehen eines strahlenden Serns"

If you click on the link, you can watch the video version of this poem in German on YouTube:
https://youtu.be/re-GKx59xZo

Here you can find the dramatic story in English:
https://youtu.be/3tHHomGmgbE

The depiction of a stylised woman's face on a bright circle represents the moon. The light-coloured circle is underlaid with a darker green circle.

Did you know...?

Have you ever heard that a dying star spits a cosmic bubble from which a celestial child is born? A universal womb, so to speak. Since we are all star children, this opens up a new perspective on motherhood.

a planetary nebula, the remnants of a dying star. This is the best view of the little-known object ESO 378-1 yet obtained and was captured by ESO’s Very Large Telescope in northern Chile.

^{Objekt ESO 378-1 – Planetarischer Nebel – ESO}

A planetary nebula is the remnant of a dying star. Many of us follow the idea that these brilliant stars end up as supernovae and die in a big bang. In fact, billions of years can pass - a very long death by human standards - before a celestial body of this kind has breathed its last. At some point in the distant future, our sun will also literally breathe its last as a small white dwarf.

But the birth of a star child is also time-consuming. Ultimately, matter is formed from the remains of the decaying star, giving rise to new worlds with sun, moon and stars. And sometimes these new worlds are full of life.

Everything is connected to everything! We are all children of the sun.

The ESO (European Southern Observatory) described more about this mysterious phenomenon back in August 2015: "The Ghost of a Dying Star"

Even if the lifespan of a human being may only seem like the blink of an eye of the universe, there are still, at least in visual terms, 8 billion blinks of an eye. If you are interested in my thoughts on being human, have a look: "Only human or superpower after all?"