Stellar theories cause sleep to be lost
By Carlos Raigosa, editor-in-chief

     I am star stuff. You are star stuff, and I am carbon based—just like you.
These similarities make me a sibling to everyone on earth; I’m just grateful I don’t have to buy Christmas presents for Paco in Columbia; Henry in Wales and Myin Yung in Seoul.
     The fact of the matter is that the more I get into my astronomy class, the more I begin to learn how naive I was to start off with.
     That knowledge also makes me feel about as big as the period at the end of this sentence.
Last week I learned about our closest star, the sun, or Sol if you want to get technical with it. It’s totally mind boggling how much we know and can predict about this stellar monster.
     Eventually, we will burn up and all traces of human history will be disintegrated in a matter of minutes.
     The worries behind all of these green house gases killing our Earth and the hole in the ozone layer becoming larger take a back seat to a fire that is hotter than anything ever recorded in the depths of the Earth.
     The fact that my driving record has more dents in it than the moon will not matter anymore. And these high gas prices—who will give a flying flip?
     The end is inevitable; nothing can truly be done once the time comes, and I can assure you no hole in the Earth will be deep enough to hide in once this ultimate end is scheduled to happen.
     The only thing that makes me feel a tiny bit better about all this is the fact that according to the publishers of my book, it won’t happen for another 50 billion years.
But then I begin to think, what if these smart “Poindexters” at NASA forgot to carry the one or move a decimal point?
     If they did that, perhaps the end is merely 25 billion years away.
     But I’m only midway through the semester; what’s going to scare me next?
     So for now, I’m just going to hope the sun keeps me warm enough to live through this next winter.