By Stanley Seshie

On a clear dark evening, the sky is dotted with “little” twinkling
objects. The brilliance of these heavenly bodies up there amazes
humanity from time immemorial. They have inspired a profusion of
magnificent artistic works, songs, and poetries as well as
philosophical ratiocinations. Also believed as the home of the Gods,
Plato of ancient Greece would intone that, “astronomy is the only
study we require to bring us true piety”. The Psalmist of ancient Jews
would proclaim that, “the heavens declare the glory of God”.
Recently, Immanuel Kant would dramatize it, that, “two things awe me
most, the starry sky above and moral law within”.

Well, as to whether indeed the heavens declare the glory of God as
well astronomy inspires piety or not, the poet and religious are not
so much concerned with facts as creating images to establish mental
connections with their believed Gods of the heavens. Today or at least
starting from the 19th century, a lot had been abstracted and
extracted from the heavens and the objects therein. Per the facts as
accrued in our times, we rightfully think otherwise.

The sun powers all life on Earth with its energy. We now know it
produces its energy through nuclear fusion, using hydrogen atoms. The
same applies to all stars. And just as cosmologists have observed
ancient relics of exploded stars called supernovas, flooding space
with debris and dusts, our sun would someday replicate same. The
unaided eyes of our ancient philosophers, poets and religious insulate
them from ever glimpsing any of such realities of nature. All these
were recent knowledge through the relentless pursuit and clarification
of the ultimate building blocks of matter. Wherein we started with the
atom as indivisible, only to know from the 18th century that it is
divisible through Joseph John Thompson and Ernest Rutherford among
others.

Marie Curie and Henry Becquerel would tell us that not only are they
divisible, but some are even unstable and emit radiation/energy on
their own. As if that is enough, the works of Enrico Fermi and Leo
Szilard would assure Albert Einstein that the nucleus is far richer in
energy than can be imagined. And Albert Einstein’s special relativity
theory would mathematically unveiled how to tap this energy via the
famous equation, E = mc2. The result as the engineers get to work is
the nuclear, atomic and hydrogen bombs with unimaginable destructive
capacities to life and properties of which Hiroshima and Nagasaki were
the two prime unfortunate examples.

The sun and the nightly twinkling “little” stars are rather huge ball
of gases even bigger than the Earth. They are NUCLEAR BOMBS. In other
words, the heaven is collection of nuclear bombs. Every bomb explodes.
We are familiar with explosions. In a generation of industrialism,
militarism and terrorism explosions happen accidentally as well as
intentionally. Terrorism with its use of explosives has increasingly
become the deadly means by which we unleash our viciousness on one
another to the chagrin of Kant’s supposed “moral law within us”.

The energy released by chemical bombs during explosion is
infinitesimal compared to that of a nuclear bomb. Unlike the chemical
bombs that terrorist’s plant at vantage places to detonate within few
seconds to minutes, the rate of detonation of the stars depends on
their fuel content. More fuel more time. Our sun would last for the
next five billions years per the fuel content. It therefore, poses no
immediate threat. Nonetheless, it is an automatic nuclear bomb waiting
to detonate.

Clearly, it is not a starry heaven. It is nuclear bombs heaven. It is
a Chernobyl heaven with an assured nuclear disaster lurking around.
The “starry” heavens never declare the glory of God than is the
rainbow a sign of covenant between God and man. If anything at all,
bombs declare the viciousness of terrorists and the state in
possession of them. The very sun that nurtures life on the planet,
irradiating the forest and surface of water with such aesthetic
beauties to elevate the spirit of the poets and the religious as the
philosophers contemplate the meaning of it all would violently
extinguish it someday. It is said that men have plans for the Gods.
But the Gods, if they exist, had none for men. For this and only this
reason, we invented religion to assure ourselves that they do, just
that we do not understand. We do. They don't.

FB: Stanley Seshie
Whatsapp: 0248412308
Email: seshiehanku@gmail.com