The Dolphin Chronicles; The Setting Sun

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Beginnings |  Our First Encounter |  Mis-measure of Time
Blue Water Soundings |  Oceans of Light |  The Setting Sun

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I was standing on the beach watching the sun set. Crimson streaks fused into indigo and violet splashed across a tangerine sky. The Sun put on its final show for the day.

I was thinking how that majestic curtain call would travel all the way around the world until it became my sunrise. I looked over. My old pal was bobbing up and done in the swells next to a craggy rock covered in emerald moss and wet tangerine highlights.

"It’s a beautiful thing, isn’t it?" he asked me.

Words could not describe what I was thinking. My friend told me, "I know how you feel".

Of course, my friend deals with feelings more than just about anything else. "I wish I could be a dolphin just like you", I laughed.

"Then, watch the sunset and really understand what is happening. Look at the source behind the scenery. There is an amazing intelligence behind that sunset. Everything is so precisely engineered. When you come to understand what is behind the sunset, then you will be like me. Not a dolphin in the physical sense, but with a dolphin mind."

"I see a beautiful orange ball just starting to touch the flat horizon of the sea. What more is there to see about it"? I asked naively.

"You should see the story behind the sunset." He quickly remarked. "All the material needed to make that star you see and yourself was provided by the singularity of creation. Your scientists call it the ‘Big Bang’, I believe. Other suns that would dwarf the one you are looking at right now made the more exotic materials.

These stellar giants exploded with unbelievable power and violence. Before their glorious demise these forges of the Creator were so hot that they made all the heavy elements, even gold. These were blasted into space and eventually jointed other pockets of gas and dust to create huge clouds or nebulae.

One day there was enough material collected and a huge shock wave from a nearby exploding sun caused it to begin to spin and contract. Much like a typhoon. As it pulls itself in tighter, its mass increases as well as its gravity. It pulls more and more of the space dust and gas into itself. For us this happened 4.6 billions years ago.

100,000 years later it had contracted into a swirling disk with a core that grew hotter and hotter under the pressure of more and more material spiraling into its center. Amazingly, natural physical forces began to sort out the different materials that would make up the inner and outer planets.

In the center the hydrogen gases squeezed to a density 160 times that of water and heated to 27 million degrees Fahrenheit. That was the moment the solar furnace ignited. Hydrogen was being fused into helium and our star the sun was born. It then organized itself in an amazing way that allowed us to be here in the first place.

The sun would keep collapsing upon itself, if not for one thing. The nuclear furnace pushes back against gravity. An intelligent thermostat was built into this amazing sun to allow life on the third planet forming in orbit. If the center begins to cool, it contracts because of gravity. This causes tidal energy to turn the heat back up and the fusion reaction returns to its perfect balance. If the center heats up and expands, it will cool off and gravity will push it back to its rightful place. Now it will burn not too hot and not too cold - just enough energy to sustain the life that would come on that little planet, still forming from the rocky aggregate circling the sun.

The core of the sun is subjected to 200 billion times the pressure on Earth’s surface. It is heated to 27 million degrees Fahrenheit. In this nuclear furnace, 700 million tons of hydrogen atoms are fused together to form 695 millions tons of helium, converting the remaining 5 million tons of matter into energy. This happens every second. This is the energy that makes an incredible trip to reach you here now.

The energy that is released must be carried from one atom to another like a fire brigade. It passes through the five concentric structures of the living sun. This process takes ten million years. During this voyage it is cooled and eventually creates all the temperatures of light - especially the ones most useful to us in the visible range of the spectrum.

Then it’s a quick 9- minute trip through the vacuum of space for a quick and final filtering. Here the fatal frequencies of light are filtered out by our atmosphere. What you are seeing now is that energy tumbling through our atmosphere until it reaches your eyes. The fact that you can see that light and register it is entirely another story.

"So simply put, don’t just see the sunset, but see the Creator behind it." With a flick of his tail and a splash on my face, he was gone. I watched the last golden crescent of the sun slip behind the sea. I will never look at another sunset the same way again.

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Beginnings |  Our First Encounter |  Mis-measure of Time
Blue Water Soundings |  Oceans of Light |  The Setting Sun

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