Cosmos-Have you ever wonderd

before reading any further i would like you to ask yourself, are you alone?
no idiot, i didnt mean in the room,
just think are you alone in this universe....

i think not....but what the heck is that to do with our life?
nothing in particular to be honest, but i took some time from my helter-skelter life to wait, stand, look up, watch those beautiful stars up there.
arent they beautiful !
but wait, before i get caught in there charm, i ask myself, where are they? who are they?
why are they up there and so small?
answer to these question are also with a 5yr old child, who knows the nursery rhyme "twinkle twinkle little stars"
he knows "it up above the world so high", so do we,
but how much 'above'
arent you intrigued by this large distance, aren't you fascinated by the awesomeness of those blinking things.
lets start from base.
for those who aren't/weren't a science student, light travels at 299,792,458 m/s
aprox:300,000,000 m/s or 30,00,000 km/s
if you want an estimate we drive bike normally at not more than 60km/hr i.e 16.67m/s
and here we are seeing speed of light at whopping 17,983,950.7 times than ours,
this is madness even to think about comparing, but just to show actually what is light.
anyway
did you know that it takes approx 8 mins for sunlight to reach surface of earth, imagine light traveling at such enormous speed still taking 8 mins to reach earth, 149,565,511 kilometers.
since all these units are becoming too small for us to calculate and even write here, lets look towards our maths and physics textbook, there is defined a new unit, light years, dont get baffled
it is actually distance traveled by light in one year time
one light year=9.4605284 × 1012 kilometers
so far so good, whats next now

well sorry to deviate you from beautiful stars :P
but this was the setting of what is going to follow.


okay, so we were looking up the sky, and wondering what they are, and where are, who they are
lets go step by step
most of the people like me might know what they are.
they are nothing but a ball of gas and dust, gas is mostly hydrogen
they why the heck are they glowing, well to understand this, i feel is necessary for us to understand what is fission
now if you have seen that wiki page, then in simple language i will say that fusion is actually joining of two atom/atomic nuclei, what happens is when these gas molecule are packed tightly , so tightly packed that the nuclear forces between the electron and proton loose its battle to gravitational and external pressure. will explain more soon

these stars glow because of fusion, fusion releases high amount of energy which is still uncontrollable for us humans, and havnt yet able to setup such device that could hold the energy coming out of fusion. sun is perfect example
actually sun is a mid-sized star. which has fuel almost unlimited that it has been burning continuously for last 4.5 billion years old, and whats your age :P
like sun there are many other stars, and those are there up are gas ball but some are much and many time heavier than sun, but now wonder why they are so small like speck of dirt whereas sun is so big enough to make us sweat in summer days?
answer : distance in light years (now you know why i wasted your time :P )
4.22 light years or 9.46 x 1012 km long way.....still closest
its name is Proxima Centauri.
welcome to our nearest neighbor :)