Explaining a star to a pre-modern person

[Carl-Richard]

Just forget everything about hydrogen, helium, etc., and try to imagine telling a pre-modern person what a star really is. That if you were to be able to fly and travel towards that little dot in the sky, that if you were to come close to it, it would vaporise you. How alien and God-like a star is, that it's so far removed from our physical existence as meat sacks, that if you were to actually travel to it, you would end your existence as a human being. The absolute sheer power and divine posture, world-shattering capability, of a star. And how mindblowing that is, that this is the reality as far as we can glean it from our current understanding of the universe.

Edited 22 minutes ago by Carl-Richard