The current thinking is that at the center of stars, the primordial stuff is squeezed so tightly that it fuses; becoming stuff that’s slightly less primordial and that weighs an infinitesimal bit less than the original primordial stuff. This tiny difference in mass is released as radiant energy. We sense the heat. We see the light. We feel the beat.
Among the people who think about these things, most seem to believe that the universe will continue to expand forever. That is to say, no big crunch; that the possible future or futures stretch much farther ahead than the fourteen billion or so years of the past that have so far accumulated, notwithstanding the idea that there might be no theoretical limit to the size of a hydrogen bomb, or a reactor meltdown, these being fuelled by the most plentiful element in the universe.
We can even go as far as to say that hydrogen has a single proton with one electron orbiting it.
No. But wait. We shouldn't say orbiting anymore. That would be seeing things through the frame of the outdated and discredited Rutherford model. It seems we would be much closer to the truth if we said, more or less hovering around it, or associated with it, in a fuzzy and indistinct sort of way. But even so, we can still feel an exhilarating certainty that hydrogen has one proton with an electron more or less hanging around with it.
Things were once much simpler. The trees of Eden
