The Story of The Universe
Cold - Freezing
When we think of the dark, we think of night;
but our night would be like brilliant sunshine in
comparison with that darkness. When we think of
cold, we think of ice. But ice is positively hot if you
compare it with the coldness of space - the space
that separates the stars so hot, you might say, as
a blazing furnace from which no heat can escape.
In this measureless void of cold and darkness,
light was created. There appeared something
like a vast fiery cloud which included all the
stars that are in the sky. The whole universe
was in that cloud, and among the tiniest of
stars was our own world. But they were not
stars then; as yet, there was nothing except
light and heat. So intense was the heat, that
all the substances we know - iron, gold, rocks,
water - were gases, as insubstantial as the air.
All those substances, all the materials of
which the earth and the stars are composed,
were fused together in one vast, flaming
intensity of light and heat-a heat which would
make our sun today feel like a piece of ice.
This raging fiery cloud of nothingness,
too huge to imagine, moved in the immensity
of freezing space, which was also nothingness
but infinitely vaster. The fiery mass was no
bigger than a drop of water in the ocean of
space; but that drop contained the earth and
all the stars, which are really blazing suns
millions of times bigger than the earth.
As the cloud of the light and heat moved
through empty space, little drops fell from
it. If you swing the water out of glass,
some of it holds together as it falls and
the rest breaks up into separate drops.
The countless hosts of stars are like those
drops. Only instead of falling they are
moving round in space, in such a way that
they can never collide or meet again.
They are million of miles from each other.
Pinegreenwoods Montessori
The Great Lessons
