Posts

Showing posts with the label galaxies

Autism and Galaxies

Image
Large Magellanic Cloud The microscopic patterns of life often repeat themselves in telescopic images of the universe. How we attempt to describe autism has a galactic representative as well. At first I thought to use the Magellanic Clouds but really any galaxy will do and colliding galaxies work even better. A collection of a variety of types of stars, maybe some globular clusters , gases, dust, maybe some planets around those some of those stars, and other celestial bodies zipping about Antennae Colliding Galaxies The Large Magellanic Cloud is a globular cluster in our Milky Way galaxy. Pick any star on the edge of the cloud, is it in or out? Move a bit beyond to the next star, in or out? The edges of the clouds are as fuzzy as the edges of the autism spectrum. The cloud travels through the galaxy as a discreet body. The stars in the cloud interact with each other in predictable ways. Antennae Galaxy close up Galaxies colliding model the changing ground of societ...

Perspective

Image
When life gets crazy, for me that's at least once a day, I have to readjust my perspective. I remind myself that humanity exists in this one tiny corner of the universe. The odds against our existence are so great it's a marvel we are here. There is so much for humanity to discover, so much we still don't understand. But we burn to discover what we can, learn what we can. The petty squabbles of earth seem like just that petty squabbles. Considering the vastness of space helps me focus on the things that are of true importance. Kindness, humility, grace, the things that leave marks on peoples hearts that give them strength. The Milky Way Galaxy is our home galaxy in the universe. It is a fairly typical barred spiral with four major arms in its disk, at least one spur, and a newly discovered outer arm. The galactic centre, which is located about 26,000 light-years from Earth, contains at least one supermassive  black hole  (called Sagittarius A*), and is crossed by a ba...