By: Cathey Meyer
In the last few years, we have survived a total eclipse, possible power grid failures, the invasion of electric cars, common, everyday millionaires launching into space for three minutes, and of course, the uber of all pandemics. One would think folks would begin to feel fearless about what could take you down. We are resilient and can survive the oddest of events and still have time to submit Amazon orders, receive Door Dash food, check the Instas, and stream all the movies we can watch. The
element of surprise is all but vanished. Surveillance cameras are everywhere. No one has to be licensed to carry, so the bad guys should understand they are one bullet from justice in any old lady’s purse.
We should be in a comfort zone of survival, and yet, many of us are as scared of our own shadow now as we were in our youth. Maybe we are not fearful of everyday occurrences, but fearful of the unknowns out and about coming to take us out of our comfort zone. As one of the last daily readers of newspapers, I seem to discover more and more information that gives me a moment to pause. My partner just tells me to quit reading the news and worry about real issues on Facebook. I am scared of Facebook, so I have never entered that rabbit hole, but the daily paper use to bring me comfort and joy.
My current fear is Quasar J059-4331, the bright core of a distant galaxy that is powered by a supermassive black hole. Yes, this is a real thing. Several items in that story bring me great fear. First, any black hole in the universe is of concern. What is keeping our tiny Earth from getting sideswiped by an unknown alien and bumping us into the black hole abyss? What happens to us in the black hole? Will we even know we are in a black hole? But I digress as the more disturbing issue in that article was this quote, “This Quasar is the most violent place that we know in the Universe,” said lead author Christian Wolf of Australian National University. So how do ‘they’ know the Quasar is violent?! What kind of violence is a Quasar capable of? Does it suck the oxygen right out of you? Does it steal all you passwords and take all your money? Does it just blow up the Earth? I need to make plans.
Even more frightening, J0529-4351 was discovered in the 1980’s, but ‘they’ thought it was a friendly star. I did not know to worry about friendly or unfriendly stars but will add that to my fear list. Last year, ‘they’ noted the exciting thing about J0529-4351 is that it was hiding in plain sight AND computer modelings have determined it is gobbling up the equivalent of 370 suns a year or roughly one sun a day. Hello, we only have the one sun on Earth, so how close is this thing? In a comforting note, the host black hole is 17 to 19 billion times that of our sun, but more study is needed to understand its growth rate. Ya think?!
While I am ponding how to prepare for sun loss and black hole absorption, I start reading about the Earth losing time. At least in this article, we received some warning and can prepare for change. For the first time in history, world timekeepers may have consider subtracting a second from our clocks in a few years because the planet is rotating a tad faster than it used to twirl. The time watch scientists have noted this is not a huge change that would lead to a catastrophe, but it is notable. Again, WHAT? None of my digital clocks show the same time, my phone clock and my car clock are always a minute off, yet I manage to get places in what I consider to be on time. How can a second make that much difference. Now that I know a second can make that much difference, how much difference is the difference?
While the scientists attribute the loss of a second to climate change, I attribute it to the Earth gainimg weight—just like the rest of us. We have more people than ever, more stuff than ever, more everything (except polar ice caps and glaciers) than ever. As the Earth gains weight, what keeps it from just dropping lower and lower in the universe? Then the black holes get closer and closer and finally our sun just gets gobbled up one Quasar Thanksgiving. Some folks chose to get all fearful about the state of our politics, foreign countries taking us over or women being in charge, but I am pondering the element outside our universal boundaries.
The scientists do not appear to be full of fear as they are gleefully quoted in articles. One did note that a light year is 5.8 trillion miles but did not elaborate on what that means. I fear a light year is faster than a regular year, so those trillions of miles may get here faster than we are prepare to deal with the massive change they may deliver. My yoga instructor says to not worry about those things we cannot control and breath deeper. I will take a second and ponder that if the Earth can spare the second and the Quasar does not suck up all my oxygen.
