The Poets of Starlight

This is a guest post by Robin George Andrews, a British PhD in volcanology.

You have never seen anything like an erupting, lava-spluttering volcano and knowing, at the same time, that you are safe from its anger. The product of cooling planets, this represents the planet venting heat in the most dramatic fashion. Everyone has seen footage of an effusive volcanic eruption, so attempting to describe what I saw on this volcanic landmass almost seems futile. What I will say though is this: my parents were shaking as they saw streams of molten rock and glass rocket upwards before them, no doubt silhouetting them against the shadows of the island, but this was not because they were afraid. They were looking directly at the scientific purpose of my life, of something that captivated me as a child, and has ensnared my life ever since. A simultaneous destroyer and creator of worlds, this was nature burning at its brightest.

The inspiration for Mordor from Lord of the Rings, and known as the Lighthouse of the Mediterranean for its contemporarily constant volcanic activity, Stromboli is best seen at night. Not that it would not be impressive enough to witness in the day, but the eruptions at night were like viewing a giant smash a metallic hammer onto the sword he was forging. Sparks and incandescent fountains burst into the night. Jack Kerouac, the Beat Generation author of his famous roman à clef, On The Road, spoke of roman candles burning in the night to represent the maddest of the mad people he sought out on his road trips. I wondered what he would have made of the volcanic eruptions of Stromboli. The only people for me, in that case, were not like roman candles, but were more like volcanic eruptions flaring into the night. They may burn brightly for an age, or suddenly and dramatically, but in both cases, they lit up the mountain, the surrounding ocean, and the eyes of everyone who was lucky enough to watch them burn in the first place. The only ones for me were like incandescent explosions of earthen fire streaming towards the stars. Standing on the fringes of this violence and beauty humbled me; once again, my universe altered. It became a little bit larger that day.

The first time I remember my universe changing significantly as a child was around the age of five, when I first opened up a picture book about our solar system. Not only did I find out that stars were so very, very far away from Earth, but that they were impermanent. Every star, included our own, would one day flare and fade forever. The most massive stars hiding amongst that beautiful ocean of shimmering diamonds would shatter into supernovae.

Two years later, as a seven year old with dreams of becoming a scientist already, I recall standing on the back of a boat on an English river, watching the Hale-Bopp comet streak slowly across the blackened sky. My dad explained to me that we would never set our eyes upon it again: the comet would streak back towards the far reaches of our solar system, and only return to our part of space more than two thousand years in the future.

Two thousand years ago, the Roman Empire was thriving, expansionist, and just reached the shores of ancient Britain. The apocalyptic eruption of Mount Vesuvius would conceal Pompeii and Herculaneum from view for the next two millennia. The codex, the first known form of the modern book, appeared. The Chinese Han Dynasty was spreading language and innovations throughout the region; the astronomer Liu Xin documented over a thousand stars in his lifetime. And yet, to the solar system, to the galaxies and the stars, and to the universe, this period was a mere blink, a simple change in the tide of time, a brief interlude between empyreal beginnings and the day when the lights in the sky turn dark and time ceases to be.

As Dawkins rightly says, "we are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people that could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Sahara."

So I became a scientist because I wanted to understand what it meant when stars die. And then, oh and then, I came across a speech well known by many: the Pale Blue Dot speech by Carl Sagan, summarising our current loneliness in all of space and time, framed so emotively by a single blue pixel. It was our tiny planet as seen millions of miles away by Voyager 1, as "a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam."

Without realising it at first, I became a scientist because I wanted to unravel the universe, to peer into creation and destruction, to see atoms, to think in grand, all-encompassing ways, to realise just how lucky we are, in this ever-expanding space through which we perpetually fall, to be alive to understand a tiny part of it.

Imagine a sunset in the deserts of Arizona. See those rocks, those clouds, that watercolour of a scene before you? Many people think there is very little more strikingly beautiful than a spectacular sunset, and this Van Gogh-esque diffusion and distortion of reality that occurs once a day, every day in most of the world.

All of those atoms out there, accidentally conspiring to produce this sunset, and all of the atoms within us, originated at the heart of millions and millions of dying stars, created and destroyed billions of years ago. We are as part of the Universe as anything else out there, components of the galaxies. However, what distinguishes us from all else we know out there is that these atoms that comprise us, through natural selection, have finally reached that point wherein we represent the Universe actually understanding itself. We are made of star stuff...but star stuff that can think. What could be more beautiful than that?

Well, there is one thing, one aspect of this universe that edges this thought ever so slightly: thoughts of the great minds, past and present, that unweave that rainbow to reveal its secrets. Here's to the scientists: the artists of the unconscious expanse; the painters and poets of starlight; the decipherers of the decrypted universe.

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Robin George Andrews is a British PhD volcanology eccentric, freelance photographer, author, and Indiana Jones-inspired adventurer. He's currently working on an experimental volcanology doctoral degree in New Zealand, and will be presenting his findings at the IAVCEI conference this July in Kagoshima, Japan. Visit shrinkinguniverse.com for more information and photography from across the pale, blue dot we all call home.