the coolest frontier

I’m sure you’ve already seen it, but just in case you haven’t:

Yup, the headline-grabbing “picture” of the colossal black hole at the center of galaxy Messier 87—although it’s actually the stuff around the black hole because, you know, something that neither emits or reflects light can’t be seen or photographed. And some of what you’re seeing is dust, gases and other material that’s swirling around and behind the black hole because the massive gravity bends light  around it and under it … and ….

Okay, I’ll let this guy explain what you’re gawking at and blow your mind in the process. (Note: I’ve never taken hallucinogenic drugs in my life but if I did, it’d probably feel like this)

If you’re mind isn’t warped yet, this comes (paraphrased) via Reddit:

Its event horizon is 3 million times the size of our planet, which means it’s larger than our entire solar system.

It weighs 6.5 billion times more than our sun.

And the light we’re seeing is so old (55 million years) that when it was taken, our world was basically entirely covered in forests because of the Palaeocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum. Europe and North American were rainforests. Alaska was temperate forests (and even palm trees). Even the poles had forests (Antarctica had sub-tropical rainforests).

Hammerhead sharks wouldn’t evolve for another 30 million years, the earliest versions of modern mammalian orders (bats, primates, elephants, modern rodents), same for birds. Snakes grew 42 feet long. It was a crazy time.

We can barely mentally handle the 4,500 years since the great pyramid was built. This is over 12 thousand times farther back.

After I saw this, I started thinking that since the black hole we’re seeing is from 55 million years ago, if you were there (and not being crushed by its gravity), you’d hypothetically see Earth from 55 million years ago. And since black holes bend light and time, it seems as though if you’re going to figure out time travel and go into past, it involves somehow getting to a black hole faster than light, and then somehow looping back to Earth. Oh, and math. LOTS of math ….

This, as Joopiter pointed out to me, apparently is kind of the plot of Interstellar, which I’ve never seen.

D’oh! Oh well. Great minds and what not.

Anywhoo, I’m a huge fan of space and space exploration. To wit: One of the most amazing photos in humankind:

This is a picture of NASA’s Curiosity rover and its parachute as it was landing on Mars, taken by the Mars Reconnaissance orbiter. That’s right—one human-built spacecraft taking a picture of another—WHILE ON ANOTHER PLANET 33.9 MILLION MILES AWAY! Not science fiction, science FACT!

More amazing science and space reality: We’ve “seen” the evolution of seeing disputed dwarf planet Pluto in 20 short years, going from a blurred image to a high-def picture. (And Pluto ♥s us!)

Speaking of planets that love us, recognize this tiny dot as seen through the rings of Saturn?

You should since you’re in this picture! Yeah, that’s Earth, taken by the Cassini spacecraft while it was near Saturn in 2017. I think you’re on the left, sorta near the top somewhere ….

Again, mind blown.

Not surprisingly, I hate that our generation is the first in all of humankind to actually see up close these celestial wonders that humans have stared at and worshipped and pondered through the millennia. Mainly because too many people sort of shrug and say, “That’s cool—but look, Dina Lohan broke up with her online boyfriend!

*sigh*

Some days we don’t deserve the awesomesauce that is science.

But if you think about it, exploring outer space is like exploring our innermost space, our brains. Both are complex environments that we don’t fully understand and are subjects of a tremendous amount of research. Both are critical to life, yet vastly unexplored and unappreciated. Either can be hard to access, dark and cold, but also beautiful and full of wonder. The past is always on display in each. Oh, and there are some huge empty voids in both, to be sure.

As much as I’d love to explore space, I’m not sure I have the skills necessary to be an astronaut—then again, the vast majority of people come up short as there has only been a total of 257 NASA astronauts EVER, which is about 0.00007 percent of the current population. (And if you can’t figure out the math on that, your odds are even lower.)

The good news (for me, anyway) is that I don’t need any special abilities to blast off and explore my own inner space, and maybe even stumble upon my own black hole. Even if it can be equally hazardous at times.

And I can still drink all the Tang I want!