Squiggle the Photon

Squiggle the Photon is a children's story by Christopher Smythies that helps kids learn about the universe. It follows Squiggle, a photon born in a star, as he travels through space, meeting planets, black holes, and galaxies. The story mixes science and storytelling to introduce light, space travel, and astronomy in a simple way. Squiggle’s search for purpose shows that even small things can make a difference.

Chapter 1

          This is the story of Squiggle the Photon - the cutest, cuddliest creature in the cosmos. He had big, expressive eyes, but no nose, mouth, or ears. Neither did he have a body. His wiggly arms came directly off the sides of his head, and his short legs stuck out below. Squiggle didn’t have a mother and a father. Instead, he was born at the center of a star when two hydrogen atoms collided into each other and formed a larger helium atom. Whenever this happens, a small amount of material is converted into pure energy which is packaged into photons and sent on its way as radiation. The more energy photons have, the wigglier they are. The wiggliest ones are called gamma rays and have so much energy they can pass through lead. If they’re a little less wiggly they’re called X-rays which can take pictures of bones. Next comes ultra-violet, visible, and infra-red light. Microwaves can heat up food, and the least wiggly photons - ones whose arms are almost straight - are called radio waves, used for communication over long distances. Squiggle belonged to the visible light portion of this spectrum and had an electromagnetic personality. He was the life of the photon nursery whenever he was around other particles such as protons (who were always positive about everything), electrons (who were always negative about everything), and neutrons (who didn’t care). Squiggle was also happy with his wiggliness, or ‘wavelength’ as others call it, and felt sure he was destined to play an important role in the universe.

         On planets throughout every galaxy, mother sea turtles bury their eggs a few inches under the sand on a beach, not far from the water’s edge. When their babies break out of their shells, they instinctively dig their way up to the surface and make a mad dash towards the sea before some of them get picked off by hungry seagulls. After his own birth, Squiggle’s instinct was to make his way to the surface of the star and shoot into space. This was dangerous too. He was surrounded by uncountable trillions of other photons, all madly doing the same thing. There was so much jostling, his head and arms were badly bruised and turned black and blue. If he had any bones they could have been broken! It took him about 100,000 years to squirm through a million miles of seething nuclear reactions. When he finally popped through the surface, he looked around and saw a starscape of fire and radiation boiling up from below. Gigantic plumes of superheated plasma surged upwards and licked the inky blackness of space. This was no place to linger. Without even so much as a glance back, he ran as fast as his short legs could carry him and leapt wildly into the unknown.

Starscape (top) and Planet X (bottom)

Chapter 2

          As Squiggle sped away from the star, he quickly realized two important things about himself. The first was how small he was - even smaller than the atoms around him. To give you an idea of how small an atom is, there are 7 octillion (that’s a 7 followed by 27 zeros) of them in the average human being. That’s 10 trillion times more atoms than there are grains of sand on all the beaches in the world. The second was how fast he could move now that he was no longer being jostled around by so many other photons. While he personally didn’t know his velocity, photons travel at 186,000 miles per second! That means that they can zip between planets and their moons in seconds, and between planets and their suns in minutes. In a whole year they can travel nearly 6 trillion miles - a distance called a light-year. And they never get tired or slow down. They just keep going until they hit something.

         For the first few hours of his journey, Squiggle watched as other photons around him hit a bunch of different planets and made them visible. There were giant ones and tiny ones, rocky ones and gassy ones, ones with moons and others without. One was mostly green with blue oceans and fluffy white clouds – Planet X. Its far side was dark, with glittering filaments of artificial light extending in all directions like a giant spider web - evidence that an advanced civilization existed there. Although the planets were beautiful, Squiggles only felt rising jealousy. His fellow photons were already getting so much done and he wasn’t doing squat. What was his own purpose? And how was he going to accomplish it? He had so many questions, but no answers. He was glad when he finally left the solar system and entered interstellar space.

Chapter 3

          Without any planets around, Squiggle found interstellar space tedious. Days of nothingness stretched into months of nothingness, months of nothingness stretched into years of nothingness, years of nothingness stretched into centuries of nothingness. Just when he thought centuries of nothingness were going to stretch into millennia of nothingness, he noticed the stars were changing.  Most of them were becoming dimmer, while new, blue ones scattered about were becoming brighter - so bright, their light was reflecting off nearby clouds of gas and dust. He had found a nebula - a place where stars are born. If the gas and dust became too dense, he would not be able to get through. He wondered cynically: was this his purpose? To be snuffed out by a nebula? Just when things were looking bad and Squiggle thought he was doomed, he burst into the clear and all the stars around him were once again shining normally. He shook some dust off and carried on.

Nebula (top) and Squish the Black Hole (bottom)

Chapter 4

          10,000 years later, when things were growing tedious again, Squiggle felt some slight pressure fluctuations in his arms and wondered whether he was still traveling in a straight line. After a few more centuries, he was sure there had been a change. He was following a big curve in space! Photons never did that! What could be happening? As more time passed, the curve grew increasingly tighter, and his normal round shape was beginning to look like a pancake. That’s when he spotted the problem. He was approaching a black hole!

         Black holes are bad news - much worse than nebulas. They range in size from a pinhead to billions of miles across and are the universe’s vacuum cleaners, keeping the place clean by sucking in dead stars and planets. They are extremely dense and generate strong gravitational fields. These boost their strength so even more stuff gets swallowed up. Eventually, their gravity gets so strong, not even photons can escape, and they turn black! The normal shape of space gets distorted, and things that are supposed to travel in straight lines, like make curves instead. The black hole ahead was supermassive and Squiggle’s worst nightmare. If he were to end up inside it, he would be stuck forever and would have no chance of ever achieving something meaningful. He wanted to squeak loudly, but that was impossible since he didn’t have a mouth. Besides, space is a vacuum and wouldn’t have transmitted the sound anyway. So he squeezed his eyes shut instead and wiggled his arms around with alarm.

         Just as Squiggle was bracing himself for the worst, he suddenly heard the black hole speaking to him! Even more astounding, he understood what it was saying. Just a moment . . . Just a moment . . . No, not what it was saying. What she was saying. A female black hole!
         “Who are you and what are you doing here?” she angrily demanded.
         “My name is Squiggle,” wiggled Squiggle timidly with his arms, “and I’m searching for my purpose. Who are you?”
         “I’m Squish,” she snapped, “and I’m going to gobble you up!”
         “Oh, no!” trembled Squiggle. “Please don’t! I’m only a photon. I’m not worth it!”
         Squish harrumphed. “You’re right,” she said with disdain. “You’re not even a snack! A waste of my time!”

         The curve Squiggle was following suddenly became much tighter and he was slung in a completely new direction. As he flew away, a sense of immense relief swept through him. He had been spared! When he reached a safe distance, he felt sorry for Squish. There must be something very stressful going on in her life. How else could he explain the horrible mood she was in? He decided there was something he could do that might help and wouldn’t cost him anything. He raised one of his arms and gave her a friendly wave.

Chapter 5

          After his run-in with Squish, Squiggle entered intergalactic space. The normal pattern of stars changed. Random points of light slowly morphed into a giant, flat disc with a central yellowish core and bluish spiral arms. Scattered amongst the arms were pinkish red nebulae and blackish brown lanes of dust. He was looking at the galaxy of his birth! A bright point of light appeared for a few days along one of the galaxy’s arms - a supernova! A star had exploded, sending huge amounts of energy and a whole bunch of other stuff out into the universe. When he saw this, Squiggle suddenly understood what it all meant! A galaxy was a place where stars go through life cycle. They are born from the gas and dust in nebulae, grow older in the arms, and are swallowed up by black holes after they die. The purpose of all this was to create the building blocks of life - carbon, oxygen, and nitrogen - and disperse them throughout the universe. Even galaxies had a purpose!

Chapter 6

          Squiggle had taken more than 50,000 years to reach this point in his journey. That was nothing compared to the 31 million years it took him to cross intergalactic space. All stars around him disappeared. Only the much fainter light from distant galaxies remained. Whenever Squiggle saw their photons shoot past, he would raise a wiggly arm and wave. But their eyes were grim from traveling so long and they never waved back. After a while, he wondered whether he looked as grim as they did. If there was a mirror around, he would have stood in front of it to find out. Unfortunately, there weren’t any handy. 

         After so many years, Squiggle was feeling very old and very sad. Who could blame him? It was a long time to be doing nothing. What if he never discovered his purpose and ended up being a big failure instead? How would he cope with traveling endlessly through space, with no hope for the future? Just as he was at his lowest of lows, he noticed that one of the galaxies ahead was getting larger. It was a spiral one with a central bar. The sight gave him a twinge of hope that his long journey would soon end - and by ‘soon’, he was thinking maybe a few thousand years at the most.

Tired Photons After Long Journey (top) and Spaceship (bottom)

Chapter 7

          When Squiggle entered the new galaxy, stars reappeared around him and his wiggles wiggled faster. Stars meant planets, and planets meant opportunity! He became positively excited when he overtook a spaceship that was traveling about a tenth of his speed. Its gleaming white hull was illuminated by the photons from a nearby star. He saw a window in front, and a funny-looking alien inside whose arms and legs aren’t attached to a head like a photon’s are, but to a body instead. He didn’t care what the alien looked like. It only mattered he was no longer alone.

         Squiggle saw a star ahead which was steadily growing brighter. Soon he saw a small, rocky planet with a big white heart carved on its surface and he felt warmth in his own heart. Next, he saw two bluish gassy planets, then one that had a beautiful ring around it, like nothing he had ever seen before. He wished he could put on the brakes and wonder at its beauty, but photons don’t have brakes. Next came a big gassy planet with multi-colored bands and a big red spot, followed by a smaller red one with a thin atmosphere. The last planet he saw was mostly green with blue oceans and fluffy white clouds, just like the one he had seen in the solar system where he’d been born. Half of it was illuminated by the star and half was in darkness. His trajectory sent him to the dark half where there was a large area without any clouds. He shot through the atmosphere and spotted another alien that looked like the one in the spaceship. It was looking up with two eyes like his own. This was incredible! Maybe Squiggle could be seen and take part in forming a memory that would last forever! He took careful aim and headed straight for the eyes . . .

. . . and missed!

Chapter 8

          After traveling through space for 31 million years, Squiggle missed both eyes by a whisker and had squandered his opportunity! For one trillionth of one trillionth of a second, he was so stunned at what had happened, his wiggly arms stopped wiggling altogether and twitched instead. In the next one trillionth of one trillionth of a second, everything changed completely! Yes, he had missed those eyes, but something much, much better was happening! He passed through the lens at the top end of a telescope, entered the camera at the bottom end, and skewered a sensor - the part of a camera that turns photons into pictures - right through its middle. In that instant, Squiggle helped to create a beautiful photograph of his home galaxy - one that would be admired and cherished forever. For a tiny photon who had been searching for a purpose in life for millions of years, it was the most unexpected and perfect outcome!

         Squiggle’s story doesn’t end here. The alien with the eyes entered the photograph into an astro-imaging competition and won first prize! Now it is on permanent display online and is ‘liked’ by many thousands of other aliens every year. It serves as a reminder that everything and everybody in the universe has a purpose - even a teeny-tiny, itsy-bitsy particle of light from a galaxy far, far away. When things seem bleak and hopeless, never give up. Persevere through all challenges and one day your reward will be greater than you ever imagined possible.

         Oh, I almost forgot: if you would like a chance to see a photon like Squiggle arriving from outer space, ask somebody you know to take you to a star party one night when it’s clear. Star parties are held by your local astronomy club, and they would love to see you there! Tell them Squiggle sent you!

Planets (top) and Happy Squiggle (bottom)

Photograph of Squiggle's galaxy taken by the alien's camera

Artwork by Giulia Smythies

Giulia Smythies, a self-taught artist and prolific writer, is the creative driving force of Squigglemedia. She draws upon internal superpowers to produce beautiful art. Her passion is bringing functionality and alternative viewpoints to others.

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