There are two ways a star dies. Both result in explosions unfathomable to humans.

We’re inconsequential to the universe, not unlike a single hydrogen atom floating around in space, free from any push or pull — just wandering aimlessly in the void.

All constructions start as a singular atom. There’s a possibility it contributes to the cosmos as a grand construction, after all in every direction unfathomable ones exist.

Placed in the void a singular atom could visit any of these constructions as the pull of gravity of these creations is so strong it’s almost impossible to not visit them. Some creations are in chaotic free fall and some are in a steady state of existence, not unlike our milky way.

It’s almost random as to where a singular atom ends up.

In the void however there’s a randomness of what state the atom can exist in and what direction it’s moving. When an atom is observed its state changes, the atom almost chooses where it is when it’s observed. It could be here, there, way over there, you don’t know until you observe it. They’re not large distances the atom can travel, but given enough observations it can move any distance towards any creation.

All “choices” the atom is making when it’s observed in the void.

What direction and speed the atom is moving in has most to do with its starting position and velocity.

How close it was to chaos and how close it was to beauty are almost random and have nothing to do with a singular atom, it’s simply a result of how it was created, and many atoms are created in the deaths of stars.

The atomic number of that atom determines what it can do next, many atoms are too heavy to continue to participate in the birth of new stars, as they’ve had their go and it’s unlikely that atom will be able to gather other similar atoms to do anything of meaning as the rarity of finding other atoms of that mass en masse are close to 0.

To form a star you need a lot of atoms of similar light mass, and to avoid heavy atoms at all cost. Heavy atoms signal the death of a star and should be avoided at all cost and as humans, most of them are radioactive, decaying, and bumping into other atoms without contributing to the beauty that the others are trying to create.

The light ones still have a chance however to contribute. Given enough time they may find other atoms of similar light mass and together combine their gravity to start to pull other atoms in.

Over time these light atoms may group up in such a way and in such quantity that they are no longer what they originally were, but combine to emit beauty — light.

Pressure and time create a fusion within the star that emits this beauty for a long time.

The death of a star can result in two things, a supernova where most of the atoms are thrown out never to form another star —  pure chaos which after enough time means the star will have been completely forgotten, or a black hole, which allows millions of stars to exist around it and which the life span is nearly infinite.

The longer a star exists without building up heavy atoms means the likelihood of the latter increases, so at all costs these heavy, radioactive atoms should be avoided for stars. They’re dense, hard to work with, often toxic, don’t last long and can’t fuse with other atoms resulting in a short timespan to create beauty — light, and if a star is lucky, become a black hole and provide an orbit that contains billions of other stars trying to create beauty.

To create an everlasting beauty you need a lot of light atoms that combine to contribute light, over a long period of time, under immense pressure.

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