This makes me feel very lonely:
The "Pillars of Creation" may be the most iconic Hubble photograph ever taken. "Located in the Eagle Nebula, the pillars are clouds of molecular hydrogen, light years in length, where new stars are being born," says Aguilar. "However, recent discoveries indicate these pillars were destroyed by a massive nearby super nova some 6,000 years ago. This is a ghost image of a past cosmic disaster that we won't see here on Earth for another thousand years or so-and a perfect example of the fact that everything we see in the universe is history."
Isn't that bleak? There's the sheer, unfeeling vastness of the cosmos, which is always existentially depressing. But then there's the idea that a humongous supernova can explode - and obliterate an insane amount of space - and I won't even know about it for several thousand years. In memoriam:
Via kottke
Physical Science
Comments (16)
Some of the cultural icons of eternity are a bit disconcerting to the scientifically literate. "Unchanging like the rocks", has got to be a bit disturbing to geologists. "Constant like the Northern Star", Polaris is in fact a Cephid variable star, and there is evidence it may have a least doubled in brightness since ancient-Greek times.
Posted by: bigTom | June 30, 2008 3:14 PM