X-Rayed in the Center

We live in a wonderfully bizarre universe full of stuff that’s weird as hell and very very dangerous to our health. Black holes (Spaghetti anyone?), lightning bolts spanning light-years across, the equivalent of a trillion bolts of lightning. Imagine waking up one fine morning with a cup of coffee in one hand and your smart phone in the other, sitting outside in the fresh morning, and the birds are chirping, and then a cosmic lightning bolt zaps the earth and suddenly your morning is ruined. Think of it. Galactic clusters blowing up in the night. Pulsating nebulas. Radio and magnetic storms. STARQUAKES!

We’re rather lucky to be living in a relatively quiet neighborhood with just enough oomph to drive the engine of life’s evolution. A stable environment with no friction between particles is likely not conducive to creation of higher autonomous structures. For life to flourish, there must be light. On the other hand, a highly energetic but unstable environment filled with collisions and explosions is also not conducive to life (as we know it). At least in the early stages of the development of consciousness, there needs to be an active stability in the environment.

The Chandra X-Ray observatory has released a wonderful image of our galactic core. I’m too lazy to go through the whole copyright permission request, so I drew a sketch of the image instead, but I think it’s better if you check out the original at the observatory's website: https://www.chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2021/gcenter/

This is one of the most important images ever produced in the history of intelligence. The one by the Chandra observatory, not my Picassian masterpiece, in case you were wondering. It is thrilling because it shows us that it is no accident that we’re living on the outer arm of our spiral galaxy, where things are relatively stable. More important, this image is a navigational compass to our evolutionary destination. That’s right, we’re going downtown, boys and girls! That’s where the action is. Superheated gas, magnetic strands, supernovas, dark matter, super-massive black holes, and baby we have ourselves a party. Our intrepid descendants may yet decide to venture out into that stellar mayhem. In our present human form it’s highly unlikely that we would be able to withstand the forces being unleashed in the galactic center. We’re such fragile creatures. But maybe we’ll find a way to move around our consciousness without the need for bodies. Don a new outfit, if you will, and join the party in the galactic core.

Hi, my name is @litguru, and I’m new around here.

Current Mood

Goodbye Milky Way - Enigma