Class 12 English Notes Rawalpindi Board Chapter 1 The Dying Sun

A star seldom finds another star because millions of stars are continuously wondering about in space. A few of these stars form constellations while most of them travel in isolation. They travel in the limitless universe where there are immeasurable distances among them, so it is a rare possibility that a star comes in close proximity with another.

Some two thousand years ago, a star wandering through space came in close proximity with the surface of the sun. It raised huge tidal waves on the surface of the sun and they were stronger than the ones caused by the moon on the surface of oceans. They traveled across the surface of the sun and resulted in the formation of a huge mountain beyond human perception.

As the wondering star came nearer and nearer the sun, the mountain rose higher and higher. When the star began to move away again, its tidal pull was so strong that the mountain was torn into pieces, which hurled into the infinite space.

Planets are huge pieces of matter, which were originally the part of the sun and are constantly revolving around it. They came into existence because of the disturbance caused by a wandering star when it came in close proximity to the sun. The powerful tidal pull of the star tore off some of its parts, which hurled away into space and keep on wandering about the sun until this day.

There is no existence of life on the stars because of the lack of suitable physical conditions. Life requires a peculiar temperature, which is neither too hot nor too cold within which life can exist whereas stars were originally the pieces of sun hurled away into space. Hence, stars are barren in terms of life.

Sir James Jeans is not very traveled about the beginning of life on Earth. He says that perhaps life came into existence because of the process of cooling of the broken piece of the sun over the passage of time until its temperature became moderate. It started in simple organisms whose survival was dependent on the ability to reproduce themselves before dying. In the due course of time, these organisms became complex and eventually resulted in the creation of the human race.

The universe, which Earth is a part of, is so frightening because of its vastness and the immeasurable distance between any two stars. Moreover, we perceive the stretches of time to be too great to imagine and the history of the human race is very small in comparison to the gigantic universe. Another reason is our loneliness and that our home stands as a millionth part of a grain of sand on all seashores across the world. Lastly, we find it frightening because of the absence of life anywhere in the universe except on Earth.

For the existence of the kind of life that we are familiar with on other heavenly bodies, suitable physical conditions are required. It is possible only in a narrow belt surrounding each of these fires at a distance whereby the temperature required for the existence of life is moderate, neither too cold that it would freeze everything nor too hot that it would burn everything. Whereas, the stars apart from Earth can be perceived as a collection of fires scattered through space and those beyond the Milky Way galaxy to be too cold with hundreds of degrees of frost, making the existence of life impossible. Hence, there is no likelihood of life in other heavenly bodies beside Earth.