effable | ˈefəbəl | adjective
Able to be described in words: you’ve got to distill the ineffable je ne sais quoi down into something that’s clearly effable. 
ORIGIN early 17th century: from Latin effabilis, from effari ‘utter’.

Stars are up to something…

Stars are in it for the long game. I mean seriously, if you view the trajectory of stellar formation through the metric of creating complex life as an end goal, then you have to give stars credit for their steadfast, on-mission commitment over the past 13.8 billion years (or maybe 27 billion now, thanks to JWST).

Just creating the 25 or so elements essential for life on Earth took billions of years of stars forming and exploding so they could fuse atomic nuclei into ever heavier atoms. Then of course there’s all the business of making stars massive enough (but not too massive) to attract just enough of those atoms together to start forming planets that are just the right size, and at just the right distance. It’s a lot of work. Good job, stars.

Sometimes I wonder, “why go to all that trouble?” I mean, 13.8 billion years worth of stellar effort. You can get a pretty good sense of the scale of this in a 10 minute video called To Scale: Time.

Spoiler: On a timeline of 13.8 billion years drawn to scale at 6.9Km (4.3 miles) long, all of human existence occupies the last ½ meter or so, everyone you’ve ever heard of lived in the last centimeter, and your life is less than the thickness of a human hair.

So… here we are. What are we up to? Why consciousness? Why anything? What’s the big deal that makes it worth so much energy and effort? The joy, suffering, wonder, frustration and satisfaction I’ve experienced exploring these questions has been my inspiration for creating this blog.

Our world blossoms from the stories we utter to others or mutter to ourselves. These are our effari, our utterances. What is the unspeakable, unutterable, ineffable reality that lies beneath? What hath stars wrought, and what does their light reveal?

Lets find out.

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