the lives and deaths of the stars seem impossibly remote from human experience and yet were related in the most intimate way to their lifecycles the very matter that makes us up was generated long ago and far away in red giant stars a blade of grass as Walt Whitman said is the journey work of the stars the formation of the solar system may have been triggered by a nearby supernova explosion after the Sun turned on its ultraviolet light poured into our atmosphere its warmth generated lightning and these energy sources sparks the origin of life plants harvest
sunlight inverting solar into chemical energy we and the other animals are parasites on the plants so we are all of us solar-powered the evolution of life is driven by mutations they're caused partly by natural radioactivity and cosmic rays but they're both generative in the spectacular deaths of massive stars thousands of light-years distant think of the sun's heat on your upturned face on a cloudless summer's day from a hundred and fifty million kilometres away we recognize its power what would we feel on its seething self-luminous surface or immersed in its heart of nuclear fire and yet
the Sun is an ordinary even a mediocre star our ancestors worshiped the Sun and they were far from foolish it makes good sense to revere the Sun and the stars because we are their children we have witnessed the life cycles of the stars they are born they mature and then they die as time goes on there are more white dwarfs more neutron stars more black holes the remains of the stars accumulate as the eons pass but interstellar space also becomes progressively enriched in heavy elements out of which form new generations of stars and planets life
and intelligence the events in one star can influence a world halfway across the galaxy and a billion years in the future
