Existence Explained

The Era of Stars

By Kirtana Padmakumar

For most kids who have grown up in a concrete jungle like Mumbai, sighting a star is in itself a phenomenon. Not falling into a pothole while doing so is nothing short of a miracle! Pollution, smog, and tall, hemmed-in buildings all contribute to the fact that most kids in this city haven’t been able to locate a star!! Which explains the bright young kid who, when asked to name a few stars, happily said, “Shah Rukh Khan, Salman Khan….and….oh, Aamir!”

For a long time, even I didn’t know what a star looked like. There had been numerous occasions in which my mother, sitting on the terrace in my grandparents’ house in Bangalore, would call out to me, “Come and look at the stars, they’re so beautiful!” And I, watching TV in the living room, would wonder, ‘How could stars be more interesting than Jerry clobbering Tom?’

The first time I saw hundreds of stars in the sky (a couple of years ago in Kutch), my jaw dropped. I had never seen ANYTHING so beautiful. Suddenly what I had learnt about star-formation didn’t seem so boring. For the benefit of those who don’t know about it, here’s how stars came about…

A long, long, long time ago, hanging in the middle of nowhere, was a minuscule dot, brighter, hotter and denser than anyone could possibly imagine. This dot gradually became hotter and brighter and denser until it exploded [picture your ideal mad scientist going KABOOM], shooting matter into space within one trillion trillionth of a second. Scientists have very creatively named this event the Big Bang.

In the beginning, the universe was a dark, expanding space. There was no light because the first stars hadn’t been formed yet. The first stars were created when the universe was around one hundred and fifty million years old. These stars are made up of only the first few elements made during the Big Bang (hydrogen and helium). Heavier elements were made when these stars exploded. Just imagine, the gold earring you are wearing came from an exploding star!!!

When a star explodes as a supernova it creates a cloud of cosmic dust around it called a nebula. In this nebula, many more stars begin to form. So, as you can see, over a period of many years, more stars emerged, bathing the universe in light. Then these stars began to gravitate toward each other, forming a closely knit group of stars called a Galaxy. Billions and billions of these galaxies were made, like the one we live in - the Milky Way galaxy (which houses around 100 million stars).

Imagine what the world would have been like without stars. No light, no Earth, no astronomy classes, nothing. Scary thought, isn’t it? Believe it or not, if stars never came into existence, we probably wouldn’t be here either. Everything that our body is made up of came from stars. Stars have made us what we are. We are a part of the Stelliferous Era... the era filled with stars...and the very thought of that fills me with wonder.

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Sir Isaac Newton

By Edward Barretto

Does he sound familiar? Yes, he is the one who explored the reaches of the Sciences to define Gravity and form the laws of motion. His laws might be difficult to understand in his word, but in simple language, they are indeed very interesting.

Law of Universal gravitation

There is a gravitational force acting between any two objects in the universe. There is a gravitational force between you and Earth. There is also a gravitational force between you and the Sun, between you and all the other planets, and between you and the people sitting next to you. Why do we fall down towards Earth rather than towards the Sun, another planet, or the people next to us?

The force of gravity between us and Earth is larger than the force from any of these other objects.

The force of gravity between two objects depends on the masses of the two objects and the distance between the centres of the two objects.

Laws of Motion

Anything is going to remain still, unless there is force used upon it to make it move. Also, the force has to be proportionate to the mass of the object. For Example, greater force would be required to push a car than to push a pencil.

To every action there is always opposed and equal reaction, which means that if any action is performed there will be a reaction to it, which will oppose the action, such as when you push the table, the table would not go flying away, because it would be reacting against your force and action.

Of course, Newton did not come up with these laws overnight, he had to question and think. Everyone must know the story of how Newton discovered the Law Of Gravitation,“apparently an apple fell on him, whilst asleep under a tree” and this made him wonder why it fell on him and not go towards the sky. What he really did was question simple things that are taken for granted and imagine if you and me start questioning things that really bother us, perhaps we could discover something for mankind.

But I definitely do not mean, start pestering your teachers and family over simple things, do what he did, think for yourself and if at all, take help.