He Made the Stars Also

“[He made] the stars also”—Genesis 1.16b

            Growing up Christian in the Bible Belt of the American South is no doubt different from growing up some other places.  In such an environment it is not at all strange for someone to ask you for your favorite verse of scripture.  As a lifelong learner and a teacher, my personal favorite was always Christ’s words, “You shall know the truth, and the truth will make you free”; for as another wise man once wrote, “truth is truth, / To th’ end of reck’ning” (Isabella, from William Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure V.i.45-46).

            Still, as we played these occasional games of scripture quotation, there was always some wisenheimer who would quote John 11.35.  You had to be a wisenheimer to quote John 11.35 because it is the shortest single verse in the English Bible.  There, in the story of the loss of Jesus’ friend Lazarus and Jesus’ subsequent restoration of his friend’s life, we find a single image that is so simple, yet so powerful, that later editors gave its two words space as their own verse.  There, as Jesus stands at the grave of his fallen friend, we read in John 11:35 these two words:

Jesus wept.

It is an impressive moment, and not just because of its demonstration of the power of brevity in writing.  It also shows us the sympathetic heart of the man Jesus, who wept over the tragic loss of his friend, even though he knew that he himself would, only minutes later, reverse the tragedy.                     

            But while John’s account may contain the shortest verse in the gospels, the award for greatest understatement has to go to Matthew’s account of Christ’s temptation by the devil.  There Christ is driven into the wilderness by the Spirit, where he fasts.  Matthew 6.2 reads, “And after fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry.”

            Here we find that the old cliché associating Jews with verbal humor is not without a historical basis.

            I used to tell people that I considered this verse the greatest example of understatement in the Scriptures—or I would have, if they had ever asked—but then, the other day, I was listening to someone read out loud the first few verses of the whole Bible, Genesis chapter one.  There, I caught this: “And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night.”  Then I noticed the last words of that verse: “He made the stars also.”

            He made the stars also.  Now that must qualify as the greatest understatement in all of human literature; five words and six syllables in the traditional English of the King James or Authorized Version; just two words (but still six syllables) in the original Hebrew (and the first of those words is not a strict grammatical necessity); the English Standard Version’s “—and the stars” is a closer English rendering of the original text.

            Two words.  Think about it.  The narrator has just spent a single short verse describing the making of the sun and the moon; he has then spent just two words inserting—as in a verbal parenthesis—the creation of the entirety of the rest of the cosmos beyond Earth’s atmosphere. 

            To fully grasp the scale of this understatement, we must ask: exactly what do we mean by “star”?  What is to be included within the phrase “the stars” in this verse?  Generally, aside from the Moon and the Sun, any celestial object perceivable from earth’s surface was of old labeled a “star.”  And even long after we learned the scientific difference between, say, a giant ball of hydrogen-fusing-into-helium (i.e. a true star) and a small rock orbiting the sun (an asteroid), we continued to use “star” in this looser sense as a root from which to derive names for the various types of objects we observed in the sky.  The planets were originally “wandering stars” (“planetes” being Greek for “wanderer”), so called because they each had their own wandering course of movement against the backdrop of the other “fixed” stars (which we now know move together in a fixed pattern because their “movement” is actually the Earth revolving on its axis); the term “shooting star” refers to meteors, while “comet” is from the Greek aster kometes: “long-haired star”; even the word “asteroid” is Greek for “star-like thing” (much as we refer to something with a human-like shape as “humanoid”).  So in the passage in Genesis, “the greater [light]…the lesser [light]…and the stars” means the sun, the moon, and the rest of the heavens.  That last bit covers quite a lot.

            How much, exactly, does it cover?  No one knows for sure, at least none of us mere mortals, since none of us knows the full extent of the universe; but we can say some things about the apparent extent of the visible universe.  Prior to the 1500’s, we poor, foolish Terrestrials knew very little about what a star was.  With the publication of the work of Nicholas Copernicus in 1543 proposing that the sun, not the earth, was at the center of the system of planets—a truth now reflected in the very term solar system—we began to perceive that, not only was the earth in motion about the sun along with the other planets, but the stars, which did not show any change in position as the earth made its yearly circle about the sun (none that we could detect at the time, anyway), must be very, very far away indeed—so far, that some speculated that they were themselves distant suns, possibly orbited by other planets, some of which could be inhabited.

            For the next few centuries, we counted and catalogued the many stars surrounding us in the sea of space, with the new technology of the telescope aiding us in our discovery.  In the early 1600’s, Galileo Galilei found the first definitive proof of objects in the heavens orbiting something other than Earth when he detected four satellites orbiting the planet Jupiter (this made a sort of sense: if Earth, as Copernicus had argued, was a planet orbiting the sun, yet was itself orbited by the Moon, why could not the other planets have their own moons?); Galileo’s discovery led to an interesting grammatical question: how does one inflect the Latin noun “Luna” (“Moon”) in the plural—that is, how does one say “Jupiter has four moons” in Latin?

            Well, they did eventually answer that question, but the answer is less important than it used to be, for two reasons: 1. Latin is, sadly, not used as much as it was only a few generations ago 2. Jupiter does not have just four moons—more like 79, at last count.  In fact, since the time of Galileo, we have discovered two new gas giants (the second was named “Neptune” after the Roman god of the sea; the first was named after “Ouranos”—the Heavens—who, with Gaia, the Earth, sired Saturn—after whom the sixth planet in our system is named—and the other Titans—namesake of Saturn’s largest moon—in Greek mythology.  Unfortunately, this bastardized language we speak called English seems incapable of finding any pronunciation for “Uranus” that does not sound like something that ought to be found in a men’s restroom), five small “dwarf planets,” and a total of 212 moons orbiting planets other than Earth: 8 moons for the dwarf lords, out in the cold, 2 moons to pull the war-wagon of Mars, and 202 divided among Uranus (27), Neptune (14), Jupiter (79), and Saturn (82, if you include those some say have not yet been properly “confirmed”—science seeks to be objective, but objectivity can be messy business[1]).  The largest of these moons, the Jovian moon Ganymede, is slightly larger than the planet Mercury; so if Ganymede were ranked among the planets, it would still be only the second smallest.

            And that is just the Solar System.

            Eventually, we have come to refer to the body of stars surrounding us as the Galaxy or the Milky Way, after the prominent band of stars it forms which is visible from the northern hemisphere (“galaxy” being from the Greek galaktos, meaning “of milk,” which Greek word is related to the Latin root “lact-“ found in so many milk-related words in English).  While the earliest appearance of “Galaxy” in written English is from the 1300’s (Chaucer used it as a synonym for “the Milky Way” in The House of Fame), it was not until the early 20^th century that we discovered that certain distant nebulae visible in space were actually other clusters of stars, other galaxies.  From there, they just kept—and still keep—getting larger and more numerous.  Finally, in recent decades we have been able to confirm that, yes, there are planets orbiting other stars in our galaxy—and so, presumably, in other galaxies as well (we call these worlds, in quaint, solar-centric terminology, “exoplanets”).

            The scale of all this is difficult to convey.  Take some simple numbers.  The number of stars in our own galaxy (now simply called the Milky Way Galaxy) is estimated at 200 million.  We know that one of those stars—our sun—is orbited by four gas giants, four rocky planets, five dwarf planets (at least), 213 moons (at least) and a plethora of asteroids, comets and other objects.  Just a few years of observation with modern techniques has confirmed the existence of over 4,000 exoplanets around some of those other stars.  When we consider that each planet detected about a star may imply the presence of a multi-planet system (plus whatever moons, asteroids, and comets might be involved); when we consider how many stars there are in the Milky Way which might have as-yet-undetected planets; when we reckon in the fact that scientists now suspect rogue planets—planets not orbiting any particular star, but floating free in galactic space—are quite common, perhaps much more common than planets within star systems, why, the number of planets, moons, asteroids and other objects in our own galaxy may indeed need to be reckoned in the billions, at least.

            And that is but a single galaxy.  Current estimates are that there are at least 200 billion (2 x 10¹¹) galaxies in our visible universe, with recent research suggesting an upward revision of that number 10-fold, to 2 trillion (2 x 10¹² ) galaxies.  Each galaxy is estimated to contain stars numbering at least—for the smaller ones like ours—in the hundreds of millions.  The larger galaxies, we are told, may have 100 trillion (10¹⁴)  stars apiece; the average, they say, is 100 billion (10¹¹)  stars per galaxy.

            If, at this point, you find yourself thinking, “I’ve got to get off this ride,”  feel free to take a break before the next paragraph…

            Okay, now that we have rested our minds a bit and allowed them to adjust to these new dimensions of scale, let us move on.  Let us imagine all those stars, in all those galaxies, with many of them, perhaps, having their own systems of planets, moons, and asteroids, like our own humble stellar neighborhood.  The final thought to ponder is the scale of those other stars themselves, how large (or small) they can sometimes be. 

            Once, it was difficult, if not impossible, for many to conceive that stars might indeed be other suns, as large as our own; now we know that, not only are many stars as large as our sun, many are much larger—either in volume or in mass or both; while many more are a good deal smaller—so small, in many instances, that they are invisible from Earth’s surface without the proper telescopic enhancement—and yet, each of those invisible stars is far larger than the Earth, or any other planet in our system.  Both these truths about the sizes of other stars augment our sense of the scale of the cosmos: there are far more stars in the sky than Father Abraham could have seen when he looked into the sky with his old eyes, and was challenged to number them; and some of the stars, if they were to suddenly replace the Sun, would engulf much of the solar system—in some cases, reaching out nearly as far as the orbit of Saturn.

            Stars, you see, come in various sizes.  Our own sun is considered to be of average size, but above average brightness—yet, it is labeled a yellow dwarf star.  Apparently—and may the more learned on such matters correct me if I am wrong—all stars are labeled either dwarfs, giants, or supergiants—though some of the largest are sometimes called “hypergiants.”  Dwarfs can be far smaller than our own sun (7.5% of the sun’s mass seems a minimum to maintain fusion activity), such as Proxima Centauri, the nearest star outside our solar system, which has some 14% of the sun’s 1.4 million kilometer diameter, and 12% of its mass.  Such stars—from 0.075-0.5 solar masses—are labeled “red dwarfs.” 

            Our scientific friends, who keep track of these kinds of things, inform us that red dwarfs are the most common type of star—constituting some 50 of the 60 stars closest to Earth, and perhaps three quarters of the entire population of the Milky Way—and yet, none are visible from Earth’s surface with the naked eye; so the stars we can see filling the night sky (assuming we are far enough away from the light and smog of the city) are just a small fraction of what is to be included in that expression “the stars” in its fullest sense.

            However, while red dwarfs and yellow dwarfs like our own sun are all well and good, it is the big ones that fascinate.  The sun itself it rather mind-boggling in scale, being large enough to contain within its volume more than a million planets the size of Earth.  Anyone who has ever seen the famous “Pale Blue Dot” photo snapped by the first of the Voyager probes, which shows the Earth suspended as a mote in a beam of sunlight has been able to touch upon the sense of scale involved here:

And yet, there are many stars out there that, though their creation is referenced in a mere parenthesis to the creation of the sun and moon, actually dwarf the sun itself.

            First, we should note that stars much larger than the sun are actually rather rare (fewer than 10% of the stars in the galaxy exceed the sun in size), but those that are larger can be much larger.  First, let us remember the scale of the sun with respect to Earth: the sun contains 99.86% of all the mass in the solar system, with a volume large enough to contain the Earth a million times over.  Yet, for all that size, it is far enough away from Earth, that sunlight which leaves the Sun’s surface must travel for eight minutes to reach the planet, while that same beam of light must travel an additional 71 minutes—over an hour and a quarter, total—to reach the most distant planet visible to the naked eye, Saturn.  With that put in proper perspective, let us consider some of the Sun’s larger cousins.

            Always popular for putting down old Sol is Betelgeuse, a red supergiant estimated to have about 20 times the mass of the sun, and a radius around 1000 times that of the sun or more—large enough that if it were placed within our solar system, it would reach out beyond the asteroid belt, all the way to the orbit of Jupiter (or nearly all the way; it depends on who you ask).

            Another massive star is Vy Canis Majoris, estimated variously as 1400-1800 times the radius of the sun.  If the larger of these should turn out to be accurate, it would mean that this star, placed in our system, would reach almost to the orbit of Saturn.

            Any attempt to convey the sheer scale of some of the larger stars in our cosmos—much less the cosmos as a whole—seems doomed to exhaust the powers of the imagination, but what I have learned from writing this essay is respect, both for the scale of the universe, and for the uncertainties of science at the edge.  But let us think on it all one last time.  Our Earth today contains over seven billion of us humans, along with everything and everyone else which has ever meant anything to any of us.  Every battle lost or won, every song composed and sung; all our good, and our bad…our worst, our best…and all the rest, happened here on this globe that can be caught in a beam of sunlight like a mote of dust.  And that beam of light, traveling at quite literally the fastest speed possible, would have taken eight minutes to reach us from the sun, an object that contains all but 0.04% of the matter in this whole solar system (and of that fraction of a percent that remains, we are told that 99% of it is found in the mass of the four gas giants.), and is big enough to hold over a million Earths.

            And yet, and yet, that sun is dwarfed by other stars, hundreds of times its size, in a sea of stars 200 million stars strong;  add to that the fact that this sea is one of 200 billion—or maybe it’s 2 trillion—such seas, most of which are far larger in size than our little pond of a Milky Way.

            Our solar system, in addition to Earth and its Moon, has 13 planets (5 dwarf, 4 rock, 4 gas), 212 moons, and millions of asteroids and comets.  All those other stars are likely to have plenty more orbiting them (4,000+ planets found so far), with perhaps a few more billions floating between in interstellar space.

            And, excepting Earth, Moon, and Sun, the Book of Genesis, in an act of extreme understatement, the height of terseness, described the creation of all of that—all of that—in just six Hebrew syllables split between two words:

V’et-Haccocavim       

 “[He made] the stars also.”

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[1] Particularly messy is the business of dwarf planets.  The counts I have given here are based on what I consider trustworthy and current sources; yet other sources suggest the number of dwarf planets should be even larger.  The reassuring aspect of this is that, as long as the changes involve an increase in the number of objects being considered, the trend only reinforces the thesis of this essay.