Some Perspective

It's pretty hard, right at the moment, to keep everything in perspective. Between all of our own personal dramas, the local dramas that come with the tragically bizarre collapse of the economy, and the global dramas that come from not being able to keep our grubby mitts off yesterday's sunshine, a person can get seriously overwhelmed.

But then, you get to see this.


Please allow me to interpret the sci-jarg. The dot in the middle of the left image is an optical image of a galaxy that formed very early in the Universe. How early? About 12.8 billion years ago. You are looking at it as it forms, because the light that left during formation is just now getting to us. Ok. Go away and think about that for a minute, because that should blow your mind right there.

Back? Ok. The image on the right is of the same object, in the radio. Specifically, you are looking at the light emitted from carbon monoxide (CO). Go away again, and ponder the existence of carbon monoxide, only 870 million years after the Big Bang. Need some help with the staggering-ness? C and O form in stars. The existence of CO means there were stars that lived AND died before this big cloud could form. AND the cloud had time to cool enough for the C and the O to get together and share some electrons over coffee and a biscuit. AND the cloud had time for gravity to begin to draw it together to form something new. 870 Myrs is not very long for all of that to happen! The first stars must have been very, very massive, and very, very short-lived in order to get all this done in that short time. So, go. Ponder.

Back? Ok. So now you have to think about this. You are looking at a supermassive black hole (some millions of times the mass of the sun), and a giant elliptical galaxy (trillions of times the mass of the sun, eventually forming trillions of stars) being 'born'---at the same time, in the place, very early in the history of the Universe. Staggeringly, this is exactly how we thought it should happen. Staggeringly, I can explain it to you. Staggeringly, you can understand. Score one for the teeny-tiny, microscopic gray matter connections inside your head.

One of the biggest comforts of being an astronomer is knowing that the vast majority of the Universe doesn't care about me. It just does what it does. It goes on in all its profligate excesses of space and time, and all its random happenstance, whether or not I'm paying any attention at all.

Another comfort is that I am paying attention. And my own little gray matter adds its little pieces to the puzzle, which are written down, and so will be remembered long after we've forgotten all this year's particular drama, and the last of yesterday's sunshine is all used up.