Here Come's The Sun

Not my picture, but a similar sight.

Returning home from an early morning trip to the airport we saw the sun on the horizon. It was heavily overcast so we were only able to see the sun through a small break in the clouds, and for some reason I really got a feeling of how absurd it should be that a big ball of matter eight zillion miles away should be glowing so red hot that we can feel it all the way out here on our little pebble of rock, eight zillion miles away. As long as I can remember the sun has always been a fixture, much like the ceiling light in my office. It has a location, a size, a power rating. It was defined by a set of numbers, and while some of those numbers were absurdly large, they were just numbers and could be treated as such. This was different, possibly due to being a little short on sleep.

P.S. The repeated use of 'eight zillion' as the distance between the Earth and the Sun is in no way meant to endorse a specific value for zillion. Zillion has always meant a very large number and we will continue to use it as such.