S: Is for Space

I have always loved looking at space. When I was a child I use to hang out at the Griffith Park Observatory. Now my bedroom window over looks the Hayden Planeterium. The fabric of our lives is up there in the cosmos for us to discover. More Hubble Telescope pictures were released this week that prove space has the strangest, yet most beautiful sites. From miniature black holes to distortions in the fabric of space-time, to galaxies that are eating, space the skies imatate art. If the "braneworld" theory of gravity is correct, then scattered throughout our solar system are thousands of tiny black holes, each about the size of an atomic nucleus. Unlike their larger brethren, these mini-black holes are primordial leftovers from the Big Bang and affect space-time differently because of their close association with the fifth dimension.

Imagine being dubbed "Dorian Gray" galaxy. That's what Astronomers thought that Zwicky 18 was. Cepheid variables in I Zwicky 18 didn't just start forming stars in the past 500 million years or so, but has been pumping out stars for at least a billion years and perhaps for as long as 10 billion years. They also reported that the galaxy was 59 million light-years away, almost 10 million light-years farther than previously thought.




This is whats known as dark matter. Making up the bulk of matter of the universe, it can neither be seen nor detected directly without using current technologies. Some scientists question whether dark matter is even real, and suggest that the mysteries it was conjured to solve could be explained by a better understanding of gravity.



Gravity waves are distortions in the fabric of space-time predicted by Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity. The waves travel at the speed of light, but they are so weak that scientists expect to detect only those created during colossal cosmic events, such as black hole mergers like the one shown above. LIGO and LISA are two detectors designed to spot the elusive waves. Fibonacci's spirals drawn in the 1100's are simiular to this photo taken last week.

















Last but not least and definately the most interesting, galaxies can "eat" each other and evolve over time. The Milky Way's neighbor, Andromeda, is currently dining on one of its satellites. More than a dozen star clusters are scattered throughout Andromeda, the cosmic remains of past meals. The image above is from a simulation of Andromeda and our galaxy colliding, an event that will take place in about 3 billion years. Which makes the universe a little like "The Lord of the Flies" and that is a F.A.C.T.