Tangled up in the Fabric of Space Time

I'm studying another Futurelearn online course, and it's a real brain killer.

All the Futurelearn courses I've done - and there have been ten of them on a variety of subjects - have been great, but none has been as thought provoking as this one. The debate on the comment threads has been of an extremely high level, and the chief educator, one Pierre Binetruy of the Diderot University in Paris, is an excellent lecturer with a bone dry sense of humour.

Such concepts as Galilean Frames of Reference, and Einstein's Special and General Theories of Relativity, have been covered in such a way that even a tired out working fellow such as myself can get to grips with them.

If only to a level that I can blag it in conversations at the pub with my friends.

Where am I really enjoying getting utterly lost is in the concept of "Space-Time". The favoured method for explaining how the universe expands is with the aid of an inflating balloon. Dots getting further apart as the balloon blows up represent galaxies moving apart from each other, the greater the distance between them, the greater the displacement. Within all this, phrases like "Imagine the surface of the balloon is the fabric of Space-Time."

We hear it again when the reason gravity works the way it does. "Imagine this mattress is the surface of Space-Time, and this brick is a large mass...see how things fall in towards it as Space-Time is distorted. If the mass is great enough, even light beams may appear to bend."

Aha, thinks I, Space-Time must be a physical thing if it can be distorted by masses, and post such in he discussions, only to be shot down - politely - by proper science people saying "Well, not really, it's not really a tangible thing, imagine it more of a terribly terribly terriblyterriblyterriblydifficultsciencemoresciencebrainbentbrainmangledbrainfried concept."

So I'm still left with my tangible Space-Time, a tight skin of rubber, or a wafting satin sheet drying in the breeze, smeling gloriously of pink bottle Lenor, before the wind blows it off the line and it wraps itself around me in super symmetric knots. Galaxies gathered along filaments, 23 dimensional superstrings.

N and P. The branes. The Eleventh Dimension that wraps the entire Universe round yet is closer to you than your own clothes. Harmonics in space. The vacuum that isn't a vacuum but rather spits out and reabsorbs energies as subly-sub atomic particles come into being for trillionths of seconds.

None of it is understandable. All of it as beautiful. Not beautiful as a bird or flower I might photograph of a summer's day, but the beauty of it being simply every damn thing there ever was or could be.

Enjoy this film of the universe from near, to farther than far can be.

Si

All text Copyright CreamCrackeredNature 05.11.15

Nasty lager, good astronomy

Skies were excellent again last night, so I set about trying to confirm the sightings I made the night before.

Largely, this is what I did. Messier 51 seemed to be in the place where I left it, and Messier 81 was spotted too. However, I got my globular clusters mixed up; what I believed to be Messier 92 in Hercules, I think must actually have been Messier 58 in Lyra. However I did scoot across and find Messier 92 halfway between Hercules' mighty legs, a similar sort of appearance to Messier 3.

La Superba is tricker, largely because it's colour seems top be nearer to pink than red, and it is at a magnitude that at my urban site, is borderline for showing colour in my 10x50s. I'm pretty sure I identified it, but simply, my observation technique, shaky hands and eyestrain make it difficult!

I tried to be super optimistic, and have a look for Messier 97, the famous "Owl Nebula" beneath the pan of Ursa Major. Fat chance from my location I suspect. The nearest thing to an owl I saw was a spooked blackbird that suddenly erupted from a tree and made some scolding chacks at me in the darkness, as I supped on a bottle of rather unpleasant cheap Czech lager that made my tongue feel odd.

Birds are an eerie sight by night. Give me my stars any day!

Triangulum Joy

Night before last, all was chilly and clear. Autumn has decided to start suddenly and early, as summer started suddenly and late. I came back from a quiet and short pint at a comfortable hostelry knowing it was a 10x50s night, so I grabbed a drink of sadly unmulled cider and headed outside.

It was a profitable little observation session. I worked my away over from West to East - M15, M71 in pretty little Sagitta, the Fox's curious Coathanger - Messier 39 looking more and more to me (and wrongly) like a miniature Pleides at the end of a long trail of beautifully myriad stars along the back of The Swan before you jump across the see faintly the two NGC clusters at the head of Lacerta the Lizard.

I took in a few coloured stars too, Scheat, the star Elenin is it? In Draco's head? Enif, the Beta and Gamma Andromedae pair. I then had to switch position and scare any awake neighbours, before catching the usual Perseus suspects and the two Cass clusters, and The Pleides for real, and the Hyades. Even in my shaky hands Jupiter's moon Ganymede was visible.

A sure sign  of winter approaching, a couple of the Auriga open clusters were visible, although it was smoggy lower down - can never remember off hand which Auriga cluster is which.

The Andromeda Galaxy was plain, but it was in Triangulum below my special goal lay. Starting at the bright orange star in Aries, I starhopped up to the point of the Triangle before heading off towards two o'clock and the corner of the square of Pegasus.

Sure enough, a surprisingly large but very faint hazy smudge was visible, at this sort of orientation it seemed \\\\\\\\\ - it was the Traingulum spiral, Messier 33. The third main galazy of our local group, and at 3 million light years away, supposedly the furthest object visible with the naked eye.

No chance of seeing it with the naked eye, and looking at how low its surface brightness is compared to Messier 31, I'm amazed you can; but it's the furthest object I've picked up in my 10x50s - I had a look for Messier 81 in Ursa Major and failed, and I've never really picked up Messier 51, so, that record may stand for a while!

Unless I ever go to a deep sky park!