Ingens Reverto

On May 13, 2009, Space Shuttle Atlantis "grappled" the Hubble Space telescope (translation: hugged) for one final shuttle-Hubble lovefest in space.

This happened 600km above the Earth at a speed of 7km/s, or 25,000 km/hr. The average distance from the Earth to the Sun is 149,000,000 km. So, during this momentus spacehug, Atlantis and Hubble were approximately 148,999,400 km from the Sun.

So, naturally, some guy in Florida did a bunch of math and calculatin' and all that stuff and then pointed his telescope at the sun and took a bunch of photos of the space shuttle and the Hubble passing in front of the sun over the course of 0.8 seconds. Twice! All of this through a small 5 inch telescope.

"Oh man," says the Space Shuttle. "It's hot bein' 148,999,400 km from the Sun. Lonely too."

Shuttle and Hubble together: BFF Friends Forever.

Huger, Awesomer photos on dude's website.

The only thing that will save us is the Matrix of Leadership

(Editor's Note: Guest Blogger! "SHUT UP CECI!")







Sometimes I get nauseous when I think about anything bigger than a house. My biggest fears consist of, but are not limited to: the Marianas Trench, Jupiter, and Colossal Squid, simply because their sheer size is so overwhelming I think these things will eat me.

So, along the line of being eaten by massive(ly awesome) things, I must be the bearer of bad news. The hugest, most awesome thing in existence might not be located in our universe. Good for my piece of mind, bad for anyone who gets off on potentially being swallowed alive by things like the Marianas Trench, Jupiter, and Colossal Squid (ew).

To understand what just went down at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, we must start at the beginning.

OF TIME.

Scientists "know" the age of our universe to be 13.7 billion years old, so the farthest light could ever get from us is 13.7 billion light years away. This is called the "observable universe." We don't really know how big our universe is, we just can't see further than the age of it. To this cosmic big bang soup we add a little theory called inflation. Among many things, it includes the idea of a BUBBLEVERSE, or multiverse. For the sake of making this whole thing less scary, I'll stick with bubbleverse. This theory posits that there are multiple universes beyond the horizon of our own. After the Big Bang, there were these huge fluctuations in energy that caused rapid expansions in space-time (whatever the fuck that means), creating "bubble universes." This theory is totally LEGIT--Brian Greene says so.

To make a long story short, there are a fuckton of galaxy clusters being sucked out of our observable universe. Meaning, OUT OF OUR BUBBLE. According to space.com:

Patches of matter in the universe seem to be moving at very high speeds and in a uniform direction that can't be explained by any of the known gravitational forces in the observable universe. Astronomers are calling the phenomenon "dark flow."

This movement is not the same movement causing our universe to expand--and its speed doesn't decrease over time. WTF. Plus, it's being sucked out to a specific spot--between the constellations of Centaurus and Vela (or that pink spot of death in the map of the cosmic microwave background above). And nothing in our universe has the gravitational strength to cause it. So whatever is causing the flow must be located outside the observable universe. Basically, there is a river of star stuff being STOLEN FROM US. By what, you ask? Again, space.com:

It could include giant, massive structures much larger than anything in our own observable universe. These structures are what researchers suspect are tugging on the galaxy clusters, causing the dark flow.

GIANT!

MASSIVE!

STRUCTURES!

Eating OUR galaxies!

My friends, your childhood nightmares have returned. Unicron is REAL.

An Exercise in Scale: VY Canis Majoris

Here’s your mind boggling moment of the day.


The pictures here depict a star (the bright dot in the middle) and it’s solar ejecta.

This is no ordinary star.

The star, VY Canis Majoris, is 1800 to 2100 times the size of our sun. It is the largest known star in the galaxy, and if placed in our solar system, would extend to Saturn’s orbit. If for some mentally deranged reason you wanted to walk the circumference of VY Canis Majoris, assuming a walking speed of 3 mph/8 hours a day and a suit somehow capable of protecting you from temperatures reaching five goddamn thousand degrees Fahrenheit, it would take you approximately six hundred and fifty thousand years to get back to where you started. Compare that to the paltry 310 years required to walk around Sol, our sun, or the downright pedestrian and very reasonable 2 years 7 months to complete a circuit around the Earth.

So, now we that we have a better idea of how fucking gigantic this combusting ball of flammable gasses is, consider its solar ejecta. It easily extends at least ten times the diameter of the sun itself, which is, well, beyond any sane person’s ability to comprehend. I give up.

Space: The Most Hugest of Awesome Things

So, while the following link contains pictures not of some testament to the hubris of mankind (hubris of the universe, perhaps), it was certainly made possible by our orbiting satellites.



Views of Jupiter

Now, pick your jaw up off the floor and continue about your day.