Stardust to StardustThe Life Cycle of a Solar System

A Short Picture Story by Wynn WolfeCredit: NASA, NASA Artists

Red Giant stars expel stardust…

which create all variety of Planetary Nebulae…

that dissipate into gargantuan fields of stardust and gas…

which eventually re-coagulate from small Bok Globules…

to star-forming pillars and clouds trillions of miles in length…

that beget Proplyds from within…

and spin to Protoplanetary Disks without…

that create solar systems like ours…

and overwhelming numbers of exo-planets orbiting other stars, other solar systems, up to 150 million light years away, discovered by NASA’s earth-orbiting Kepler Space Observatory

launched in 2008…

some located in the so-called habitable zone — perhaps with water…

like our home planet Earth…

from which emerge life and consciousness…

whose educated imaginations take flight…

to learn from Nature…

to ultimately give back to Nature.

Last words from a letter of condolence by Albert Einstein to the Besso family on the

passing of his lifelong friend Michele Besso, March, 1955…

“…People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a

stubbornly persistent illusion.”