Some Knowledge

There were some clouds in the sky this morning.  It rained for a few minutes a little past noon.  Now the clouds have blown away and the sun is shining.  It is a warm, bright, wonderful afternoon.

When I see the sun shining full force down on the earth, I think of all the good things we get from our star.  The light makes the plants grow, and plants give us food.  Our planet is warm and comfortable for life because of the heat that comes from the sun.  Sunlight drives the winds and the rain, and allows us to see what the heck is going on in the environment.

There are many stars in the universe.  Our star the sun is very nice.  It is small enough that it will not burn up too fast.  The sun has a lifetime of about ten billion years.  Half of those years have passed already.  The sun is in the middle of it’s life.  The whole universe is only supposed to be about fifteen billion years old, which makes the sun a third as old as the entire universe.  Earth orbits a second generation star, but it is a star that will shine for many years.

If people would make plans and prepare for the future, we could get all the energy we need from the sun.  We do not need to send space ships to the sun to extract this energy.  All we have to do is grow crops and trees and harvest solar power with solar cells and windmills and hydro-electric dams.  Sunlight is not as concentrated as energy from fossil fuels, but it can easily be made concentrated.  We could grow algae for processing into oil in shallow ponds near the sea.  There are so many ways to harvest solar energy, and humanity will never run out of this power.

A billion years is a long time.  I wonder what the world will be like in a billion years.  Will it all be paved over with concrete, and intelligent self-replicating machines live in underground tunnels?  Who can say.  I think people will eventually find a way to live happy, productive lives without all the time worrying about the amount of money they have and without having things like wars destroy their security.  People are pretty intelligent creatures.  We will find a way to solve our problems.