Star Death. Leo Emmanuel Lochard

      1

      “Look at a light bulb! What do you usually see? Light comes out of it. That’s wonderful. We all love light especially when we need to see. But what would you say about the light bulb itself? It’s good? Think for a moment! What is it made of? There is a metal filament that glows inside the glass bulb, but in a vacuum. It’s glowing because it received an electrical charge, and as it glows, it releases energy in the form of photons or light rays that allow us to see; it also releases a certain amount of infrared or heat. Do you also know that the bulb is ‘dying?’ Say again? Yes, the bulb is in ‘a state of death’—so to speak; we know, it’s not alive and cannot die. But in a manner of speaking, the bulb is useful to us as it is itself ‘dying.’”

      “In other words, the metallic filament inside it that’s glowing in a vacuum is burning out its atomic elements—shedding its mass, so to speak, in order that we might see. Specific amounts of filament mass are converted to ‘excited energy’ in order that the bulb might radiate light and a small amount of heat. The light radiated does not return to the bulb as ‘electromagnetic mass.’ It’s done its job—which is, to shine. It is in an ‘excited state’ as the bulb glows, rather than ‘congealed state’ whereby it could conserve all its mass-energy. The filament returns to a ‘congealed state’ when we turn its light off. But a light bulb was created for shining—and that, it must do. And it does only that—for all other purposes, it is however useless. You cannot touch it or hold it lest you burn your skin, let alone eat it for dinner. That’s a light bulb—it shines its light and we see, as long as the light switch is turned ‘on.’”

      “But light bulbs do ‘burn out’ or ‘fade away’ for one reason or another, such as in a ‘power surge’ that overloads the filament’s capacity to glow within its specifically allowable wattage; or during a ‘short-circuit,’ for example, as when a positive wire meets a negative wire. And sometimes, the bulb has an increased intensity in glowing and then burns out as it ‘slowly fades away.’ And you take a look inside it to see where the filament ‘broke off.’ And if you shake it, you can sometimes hear the broken piece inside the bulb as it slams against the sides of the bulb.”

      “But that’s not the only way light bulbs can ‘go out.’ Sometimes it is due to ‘wear-and- tear’ or ‘glowing time,’ or “lighting duration,’ because a light bulb has a certain ‘life span’ or ‘luminosity period’ during which it can glow, expressed in ‘lumen units,’ ‘wattage per hour’ or ‘life hours’—in short, the bulb’s ‘life’s span’ is expressed in how many hours of service it can provide. If the case is ‘bulb-death’ due to ‘wear-and-tear,’ the bulb just ‘stops shining.’ The filament may break off or it might not, depending on the circumstances that led to the faulty step causing the malfunction. There comes a point where the metal’s own atoms and molecules might lose their very capacity for electro-static bonding for energy processing, flow, circulation, and release. The electrical Input-Process-Output mechanism then just stops working, analogous to when a piece of metal gets rusty whereby molecular conduction of electricity has ceased.”

      This conversation or soliloquy on the electro-mechanics of the light bulb took place between a father and a son, at about 5 pm on a Saturday afternoon—John Trinklung and his son Marc. John is 42 years old; Marc is 17 years old.

      “Dad!” said Marc.

      “Yes, Marc,” replied John.

      “The sun is like the biggest light bulb, isn’t it?” Marc asked.

      “For sure, son!” enjoined John. “You might say that, yes, in a way, yes. What made you say that?”

      “O, I don’t know, dad! Just thinking, I guess! They both glow and shine in different ways, so to speak!”

      “Yes, that’s true. Well, call Mom and Jeanie, son. It’s time for supper!”

      * * *

      2

      For the past decade, on and off, people watching television news broadcasts and reading print magazines and newspapers have noticed certain patterns in “terra-events” or “geo-happenings” that concern the “state of the Earth”—in its ecology, bio-sphere, hydrosphere, weather systems, magnetic field, plate tectonics, etc . . . When these things touched conveniences or utilities, or supporting technologies that made human life more easily livable, then a more focused treatment was given to specific processes, because of the cause-and-effect relationships, from which, affected parties might be able to obtain satisfactory relief, in knowledge and application, equity and redress.

      Since last year, the news coverage, at least for a while, focused upon farmers’s complaints regarding diminished crop yields, the causes of which having not been conclusively amenable to weather activity only. Consequently, there were many areas of “agri-business,”—the term used to denote all financial and commercial activities in agriculture—that received attention in the press because of their operational importance in the “crop-raising” business. Farmers directed their complaints against fertilizer companies for degrading the quality of their products and for altering their formulae due to profit motive reasons that, they believed, were inimical to crop yields that favored revenue enrichment of farming operations. Pesticide manufacturers also received their share of farmer excoriation due to the noticeable return of certain pests, like the corn bore, which farmers had thought were definitely under control, but which proved not to be.

      Corn, soybean and wheat required respective planting season treatments that were more or less standardized within the farming community as seed development took precedence over improvements in cultivation methods that were contrary to those that had stood the test of time.

      That was September 2009. Since the problem with decreasing crop yields had affected the last two planting seasons, all eyes and ears were focused on the present planting season for research purposes, in order to attempt to determine the ultimate cause of these crucial changes in the agricultural industry. Feeding people was serious business. And it appeared that it was a world-wide trend with countries like Brazil, China, Russia, France and Italy, for example, reporting variations akin to gradual degradation in crop yields, as sustained in the United States of America.

      Analytical and statistical evaluations from previous years have concluded that it was an event likely to continue, and that only accurate reporting procedures, research, data collection, evaluation and analysis protocols could determine a course of action to deal with the consequences,