Diplomatic World 67

for driving a convertible. That season is always. And at night as
well. Thanks to sophisticated heating and ventilation, it’s a highly
pleasurable experience to be enveloped in heat and perfectly
shielded from cool or icy winds.
Seen like that, one drives through a starlit night under the
sunshine of many thousand suns. As Manuel Philipp, our guide
through the world of celestial bodies, points out so concisely:
the sun is a star. And every star is a sun. Six thousand of them
are present for us to observe at night – 400 billion of them in our
galaxy alone.
disc). That, while we follow along in amazement as models of
the sun and galaxy are used to explain these things, and as we
follow the laser pointer and appear to be standing in a specific
place, we are in fact moving. Or rather, being moved. Constantly.
Through the Earth’s rotation, at a speed of 1,200 km/h, and at
over 100,000 km/h, too, as the Earth circles the sun.
Which means nothing ever stands still. Ever. Everything is in
motion. Always. We, too, then set off again, on the move, setting
out at around midnight to track down the Great Bear in its full
expanse.
There, our solar system, within which the earth rotates on its own
axis while orbiting its central star, is hardly bigger than a piece of
confetti, and our planet, a microscopically small speck of dust in
comparison. According to current astronomy wisdom, there are
two trillion galaxies in existence. Astronomical figures which are
hard to grasp.
That’s also why our guided tour of the stars focuses on that
which lies near, or at least nearer. We find out that the moon,
which is closest to the Earth, is at a distance of 400,000 km from
us. That our solar system with all its planets – Mercury, Venus,
Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune – is in fact a disc
(shedding new light on the outdated concept of the Earth as a
Because at this moment, a portion of it is still hiding behind a
hill. It’s one of the few astral constellations that is always visible.
One point of orientation in the night sky is the North Star, also
called Polaris, which is at the end of Ursa Minor – the Little Bear.
It always points north.
We follow the Great Bear for part of the way. We’ll never catch up
with it – it will always lie ahead of us. Even though it moves by a
mere four minutes each day, from our earthly viewpoint.
Time, however, is relative: a fact that becomes somewhat clearer
when considering that the light of the Great Bear took 80 years
to reach us tonight. This stops us in our tracks and we dim the
headlights of the Continental to parking lights, so as not to disturb
this light from the stars.
Our growing humility in the face of this seemingly endless shining
world above our heads becomes deeper still with Manuel
Philipp’s final statement, “This Bentley is made of stardust”.
Add incredulity to amazement and humility. It seems an all too
far-fetched comparison. And yet, the astronomer and physicist
argues that everything on planet Earth – all material – comes
mainly from the “belly” of a giant star.
everything that we’ve brought forth comes from one and the
same place. This lends far deeper meaning to the surname of
David Bowie’s alter ego, Ziggy Stardust.
So our origins are written in the stars. Just like our present. And
even more so, the future. At Bentley, our future will take shape
under an electric star. When we return to the Star Park next year
for a night-time visit, our companion will be able to glide through
the alpine pastures in electric mode. And soon thereafter, as an
all-electric vehicle.
According to current knowledge, this giant star exploded in the
context of a supernova at some point in the distant past. The
stardust it generated was carried into a nearby cloud of gas. It
was from this stardust-enriched cosmic cloud that, several hundred
million years later, our solar system developed with the sun
as its central star and orbited by eight planets.
Photos: Bentley
Thus, everything in and around us is pure stardust, matter that
was created from the nuclear fusion that occurred inside that
giant star. And without whose existence we would not exist –
because the ball of rock we now call Earth wouldn’t have
emerged from thunder and lightning. On the Earth nearly
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