Life Changes! Everything is made from stardust! by Jennie Hart

You may have witnessed my metamorphosis from cool pulsating Nebula to a red-hot ball of gas? That was the time I became a star! I sometimes see my reflection in clouds of cosmic dust and I am no longer the fuzzy creature I used to be. This has not been problem-free; like all births, the birth of a star is a messy business.

If you think ten million degrees Celsius is hot, then eat your words! In recent millennia I have become a floating furnace of nuclear explosions and my temperature has reached exponential proportions. My gossipy neighbour has become a star too, but a considerably smaller one than I. She is no longer close by but we still communicate across the cosmos and she is never at a loss for words. I believe she has big star- envy. She is constantly noting my wild changes and has an encyclopaedic knowledge of my drastic transformations. I do not think she is jealous, just besotted with my massive form.

This eon, she says, is of great significance for me. I have been cooling down and experiencing uncomfortable griping pains at the centre of my being which my neighbour attributes to the exhaustion of my hydrogen fuel. All my hydrogen has converted to helium and the turmoil within, is my inner self striving to burn other fuels. She predicts I am creating manganese and strontium, calcium and iron and all other elements of which the universe is made. She says I have become a cosmic atom forge but I call it the creation of stardust!

Noting my recent cooler temperature, she says I am no longer a star; that I have swollen into a Red Super Giant two thousand times greater than my previous incarnation. I am immensely proud of my appearance, but my ever knowing neighbour says it will not last; this stage is limited. I am creating enormous quantities of energy and my interior rumbles and growls as my fuel supply runs out.

The final phase of my mutation will happen soon. I now know it is the moment I was created for. It is a terrifying thought but I am going to blow myself apart in a giant supernova explosion. For a time, I will outshine all the other stars in my galaxy, but only briefly.

My neighbour, body of all knowledge, says I will quickly fade to become a tiny dense object, an object with gravity so strong, that nothing inside me can escape, not even a ray of light, and so dark that I cannot be seen. I am to be a Stellar Mass Black Hole surrounded by an expanding cloud of very hot gas. Will that be my finale? I hear that becoming a black hole will mean that I have left the universe. I learn too I may have a Worm Hole where all my energy can escape to another universe. Did I say another universe? Well that is a thought! The worm hole is only hypothetical and some call it a White Hole.

I had no knowledge of the contribution I was destined to make. All of my contents, my elements, will be scattered through space and because of me (yes me!), the elements in my stardust will combine and clump together to make new suns, new planets and new life resembling that of Earth, the tiny satellite that existed in my previous orbit. I was born and became a star and now I am to share my stardust.

What a privilege my life has been!