Thoughts On The Mind-Boggling Nature Of The Universe

With every revelation of the Hubble telescope, the universe appears ever more mind boggling. According to NASA, a massive black hole has been detected by the Hubble in the M84 galaxy:

"The Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph measured a velocity of 880,000 mph within 26 light-years of the galaxy's center. This measurement allowed astronomers to calculate that the black hole contains at least 300 million solar masses. M84 is located in the Virgo Cluster of galaxies, 50 million light-years from Earth, and a nearby neighbor to the more massive M87 galaxy, which also contains an extremely massive black hole." (NASA)

Just think of it. We are but a speck in a quite small solar system "only" several hundred million miles across. Our solar system is among millions of other solar systems inside the Milky Way galaxy, which itself is only one galaxy among millions of other galaxies, of which M84 and M87 are just two. Those two galaxies are part of a cluster of galaxies called the Virgo Cluster, which itself is 50 million light years away from us.

Being that far away means it would take us 50 million years traveling at the speed of light (about 186,282 miles per second) to get there. We're talking a l-o-o-o-o-ng road trip: something like 293,729,457,600,000,000,000 miles. I wonder how long it would take someone to get there driving 60 miles per hour? OK. You can do the math.

Perhaps even more amazingly, on top of it all, the black hole discovered inside galaxy M84 contains the masses of more than 300 million suns. And, get this, according to the NASA report, in the middle of that galaxy velocities of 880,000 miles per hour have been measured. Such high velocities are apparently used by scientists to detect the presence of a black hole as well as the amount of stuff it has already sucked into itself.

Compared to the speed of light, 880,000 miles per hour is really way slow. But just think. Traveling at that speed, it would only take us around 15 minutes to get to our moon. This is definitely one of those "things that make you go "Hmmmm". The scope is almost beyond comprehension. If you ask me, in the overall scheme of things, whether or not the furniture got dusted this week is probably not worth worrying about.

Who, What, When, Where, Why

April 17: “For today's prompt, write a science poem. Science encompasses a lot, so your poem doesn't have to be scientific to still be a science poem. For instance, you could have a poem titled something like "The Science of Love," and then examine a relationship. Voila! A science poem! Of course, it'll be interesting to see how many poets talk about volcanoes and single cell organisms, not to mention finding out how many "mad scientists" are out there." (Robert Lee Brewer)

I must admit to struggling a bit with this one. Partly the modified Limerick format forced me to choose my words carefully. I thought about devoting a separate verse to each of the "W" questions. But each of them is self-defining. So, what more could be said. The result is a short, two-verse poem after a couple hours of work.

Sometimes you're the windshield; sometimes you're the bug....


Who, What, When, Where, Why
By Bill Kirk

The Who, What, When, Where, Why—
Are questions you must try,
To find each clue
In front of you,
Just like a Science guy.

But, wait! There’s one more test
For mysteries solved, not guessed.
Your final task?
The “How” you ask,
Will make your better best.