The Cosmic Wonder That Doesnt Exist.

[Mcphisto]

I hope its okay to post this link here, but its very interesting. Its about the Pillars of Creation and worth a read.

[rory]

nicely written, kept simple and interesting for beginers like me.

[Scott]

very good read

[Mike73]

Yep I really enjoy reads like this, a real break down in to layman's terms so we can all 'try' and understand the scale of it all.

Thanks for posting.

[estwing]

just wonderful

[jason.p]

Great read. We need reminding every now and again the sheer scale of the universe, and our place in it. It's humbling.

[twotter]

Nice link to an interesting, and easy to understand, article.

[Mr Flibble]

Thoroughly enjoyed reading that, thanks for posting up the link. I love these articles that put a scale on what can be seen through the eyepiece

[crashtestdummy]

love the light hearted candor

[sologuitarist61]

An interesting read and very thought provoking, thank you for posting it.

[mindblow12]

Here's another link from the same author on Super-Massive Black Holes....the same "layman" tone is used, which is great.

http://luxperci.com/super-massive-black-holes/

[swamp thing]

I've moved this to the astro lounge as hopefully some more people will get to read it in here.

[Ganymede12]

I wish I lived 1,000 years in the future! I could see the pillars being "knocked down".

Why is every Astronomical event not due to happen until we are long dead!

[euphony]

What a great and insightful read.

The way it breaks it down into easy concepts to relate to reminds me of the History Channel series 'The Universe'.

Great find

[jamespels]

I wish I lived 1,000 years in the future! I could see the pillars being "knocked down".

Why is every Astronomical event not due to happen until we are long dead!

If it helps, just remember that many of them have already happened If you had a ship that could cover the first 6000 light years in your life-time, you'd see it all happen like a movie!

[paul schofield]

Very interesting. Thanks for post.

[umadog]

It's a nice article. You can see the pillars visually, as it happens. Probably you'd need about a 12" scope, a filter (e.g. UHC) would help, and dark skies.

I was thinking, though, we're seeing the Pillars now: they currently exist in our reference frame. For observers 1000 ly closer to the Eagle nebula and they will have disintegrated. For observers sufficiently further away they will not yet have formed at all. For this reason, in relativity there is no absolute time: time is always relative. So here's my question: doesn't that mean that it makes no sense to say that we see the pillars but actually they no longer exist? Because whether or not they exist depends on your reference frame and there are many reference frames. So in a real sense, what we see when we look at the pillars is indeed what they are doing "now", because it's "now" with respect to us. The fact that we're looking into the past doesn't change that, no?

[Ganymede12]

It's similar to the "If a tree falls in a forest" isn't it? The tree has made what we would translate into sound (sound waves) but no one is there to translate it into sound.

If the pillars of creation fall in deep space, and no one is close enough to see it in real time, has it fallen over?

[umadog]

It's somewhat like that, but in the tree example the question is more philosophical and asks about what it means for an observer to be present. In the relativity question we have hypothetical observers at various distances from a source and they all make observations. What's not clear (to me, at any rate) is what is the relevant way of defining "now" for any given observer. Whether it actually means anything to say "event X happened 650 years ago but we're only seeing it today." Since time is relative, I wonder if that statement makes sense. I don't know the answer, I'm just thinking out loud.

[Scott]

It's somewhat like that, but in the tree example the question is more philosophical and asks about what it means for an observer to be present. In the relativity question we have hypothetical observers at various distances from a source and they all make observations. What's not clear (to me, at any rate) is what is the relevant way of defining "now" for any given observer. Whether it actually means anything to say "event X happened 650 years ago but we're only seeing it today." Since time is relative, I wonder if that statement makes sense. I don't know the answer, I'm just thinking out loud.

ok here goes,and i too am only thinking out loud.

if i have a house of cards and a window is open i know that eventually the breeze will blow it down, be it today, tomorrow or next week, i just don't know because it hasn't happened yet. however, if event X happened 650 yrs away and we're only seeing it now then we know it happened 650 years ago. 50 yrs ago we did not know event X had happened but it must have or we couldn't see it now. if we know that the pillars have collapsed but we haven't seen it yet then surely they have still collapsed. seeing them collapse only defines the timeframe and as you say it's only defined relative to us and of course those closer to the event.

Must stop. Brain hurting.

Scott

[Mr Q]

I wish I lived 1,000 years in the future! I could see the pillars being "knocked down".

Why is every Astronomical event not due to happen until we are long dead!

Well, if you lived 1000 years ago, you would have seen a very bright star in the daytime that went nova in Taurus. Now, the remnants of this nova can be seen as the SNR M52 (the Crab Nebula) so sometimes the whole thing works in reverse!

[stevetynant]

I really enjoyed that - thanks for posting - the post on the largest star in the observable Universe was also fascinating - what a great hobby this is