In this time: 100 stars cease to shine

Sandglass that marks the stars’ demise

From a series of sandglasses showing "other sorts of time"

Stars (fixed stars) shine, until eventually all their internal energy is released and they burn out.
Alternatively, they may end life by exploding in a supernova.

This sandglass marks the time taken for 100 stars in our universe to disappear.

The star Eta Carinae（Sep.1995/Hubble space telescope NASA）

The lifespan of the Sun has been estimated at 10.9 billion years.
It has now been around for 4.6 billion years, near the halfway mark.
Eventually, the Sun too will expire.

The Sun is a relatively small fixed star in the galaxy. In addition to the Sun, the Milky Way galaxy to which we belong contains over 200 billion fixed stars, and beyond that, the universe contains countless galaxies.

In that vast expanse, at this very moment there are stars whose lives are coming to an end.

The dust that falls from space that we spoke of in connection with another sandglass, the “Space dust…” glass, is generated by the death (explosion etc.) of such stars.

Various elements, e.g. nitrogen and carbon, scattered as dust form large clouds in which organic materials such as amino acids are said to form.
We’ve been taught to view the oceans as the cradle of life, but an even more primeval source is these clouds of dust spread throughout space.

NGC3603

Eventually material begins to coalesce in the clouds,
gravity is born,
little by little the mass begins to rotate under its own power,
and over many, many light years, a new star is born.

Our Sun, born in this same way, will come to the end of its time in around six billion years, then after many long light years, a new star will emerge.

From the demise of one generation comes the next, the previous generation becoming part of it.

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In this time: 100 stars cease to shine

Sandglass
Frame: Walnut
Leather sheet 100mm square
Sand: Natural white sand (Australia)

Frame design: monokraft (Toru Shimizu, Ken Katsumata)
monokraft are a pair of furniture makers whose photo frame designs are used for the Living World sandglass series. (The frames are manufactured at a separate workshop)

Price: 8,000 JPN

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Living World Inc.
4-8-22-1F Eifuku, Suginami-ku, Tokyo JAPAN 168-0064
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by LW 18 10, 2007