The blurry orange image of the monster black hole the size of our solar system at the center of massive elliptical galaxy M87 captured by the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) on April 10, 2019, was one of the most extraordinary achievements in modern science. The image is an epic example of the human species ability to imagine the existence of an object that not long ago, scientists of the stature of an Einstein, believed “did not exist in the real world,” nor that a fathomless dark creation existed at the very real, violent center of our home galaxy.
Today’s “Insomnia File” episode offers two stories of cosmic insight. The first is about ”An Accident More Complex than the Universe” from former astrophysicist and hard science-fiction author Alastair Reynolds, who’s epiphany is found in his novel , Blue Remembered Earth — first of a trilogy which follows humanity’s development over many centuries and Paul Davies, The Demon in the Machine.
Several mind-boggling conjectures about the existence of advanced alien civilizations have been made by astrophysicists who have found that for the last 7 billion years or so something is pushing the galaxies, adding energy to them. Something they are calling “dark energy,” a force that is real, but so far eludes detection. One of the most speculative ideas for the mechanism of an accelerating cosmic expansion is called “quintessence”, a relative of the Higgs field that permeates the cosmos.
The Galaxy Report newsletter brings you daily news of space and science that has the capacity to provide clues to the mystery of our existence and add a much needed cosmic perspective in our current Anthropocene Epoch.
Mystery of Gravity Could Soon Be Solved to Will Mars Samples Endanger Earth? (The Galaxy Report)
“Information Can Escape a Black Hole Both On the Outside and Possibly to Another Universe” (Stephen Hawking’s Paradox)
The Fourth Copernican Revolution: “Our Universe May Be One Patch of Space and Time In a Infinite Archipelago” (Weekend Feature)
Human Imprint on Earth’s Rocks to Our Inner Fish (Planet Earth Report)What the First Two Pictures of Black Holes Tell Us to What If Aliens We are Looking for are AI? (The Galaxy Report)
The Most Massive Objects in the Modern Universe –Primordial Relics of the Cosmic Microwave Background
Antarctica’s ‘Factorian Deep’ to Can We Think Without Language? (Planet Earth Report)
Mystery of Our Lopsided Universe to China’s Alien-Signal False Alarm (The Galaxy Report)
3-D Views of Interstellar Supernova “Cavities” Reveal Explosive Star-forming RegionsWhy the US Navy is Listening to Shrimp to Google has Not Created Sentient AI — Yet (Planet Earth Report)
