Author:Garrett S. P. Servais
For most people, mystery is more fascinating than science. The power of charm is doubled when science itself reaches the boundaries of mystery and stops abruptly there, saying, "I don't see my way anymore at the moment."
On the other hand, the elusive is no less powerful in mystery than the unfathomable, gazing at the boundless Pacific Ocean, while all of him looks at each other with a wild guess, "silent on one of the peaks of Darian", this dramatic effect.
It is with similar sentiment that the astronomer looks at certain places, where his gaze seems to extend from the peaks of the universe to the endless empty space. There he saw the shores of his little isthmus, and there, the vast unexplored world.
The name given to these strange hollows, "coal bags," is hardly descriptive. Instead, the effect they produce in the mind is like blank windows in a lonely house on a dark night, and when viewed from the glorious interior, they become shocking in the gloomy darkness of the dullness.
In the face of these black openings in the sky, infinity seems to acquire a new meaning, because as one continues to gaze, it loses its purely metaphysical qualities and becomes an entity, like the ocean.
The observer realizes that he can actually see the beginning of its dark depths, in which the visible universe seems to float like a fascinating island, filled with lights, life and gorgeous sights, and surrounded by the screen of crowded stars, but whose dazzling vista ends in a bottomless ocean of pure darkness that envelops everything.
The Milky Way surrounds the boundaries of our space island like a garland of stars, and when it makes openings, they are more impressive by comparison than the universal darkness of the vast interstellar expanse seen from other directions.
Even that vast space is not as dark everywhere, because it contains a dark abyss, which can be found if you look closely. Here, too, contrast plays an important role, although not as striking as within the galactic region. Some of Sir William's observations seem to suggest a link between these stains and nearby nebulae and nebulae.
There is a passage in the history of astronomy: when he scanned the virgin land of the time with a huge telescope, he used to say to his sister, who had a notepad in her hand, waiting by his side to write down his words, because the inspiration for the discovery was fresh, "Prepare to write; Nebula is coming; The space here is empty. "
The most famous "coal ladle", and the first to be brought to the general attention before astronomers realized the importance of this thing, is located near the "Southern Cross", which is indeed a surprising phenomenon.
The vacancy of this celestial body popped up in one of the richest regions of the Milky Way, not only for its prominence, but also for its superstitious awe by early South Sea explorers.
To them, and to those who listen intently to their stories, the "coal bag" seems to have some sort of mystical connection to the mysterious 'cross'. In the eyes of the sailors, it was not a vacancy, but a black-brown reality in the sky, and as they stared at it with shuddering, they reverently crossed it.
This is another magical wonder of the unknown South, so it forms the basis of many 'wild guesses' and many fur seal stories. Scientific investigation has not diminished its prestige, and today, no traveler in the southern hemisphere is indifferent to its fascinating strangeness, while some consider it the most impressive sight of the Antarctic skyline.
On all sides, up to the edge of that huge gap, the luster of the Milky Way is extraordinarily brilliant; But there, as if to obey an all-powerful command, everything disappeared. A faint star is visible at the opening, creating a strange effect on the sensitive viewer, like seeing a tiny island in a black, motionless, waveless tan.
The dimensions of the Lake of Darkness are oval or pear-shaped, 8 degrees by 5 degrees, so it occupies a hundred and thirty times more space in the sky than the area of the full moon. It attracts attention when people's eyes are directed to the area where it is located, and due to the rarity of this phenomenon, it appears more amazing than the star floaters piled up around it.
With more and more observatories now in the Southern Hemisphere, there is no doubt that this giant Australian 'coal bag' will receive attention commensurate with its importance as one of the most important features in the sky.
Photos from the Sydney Observatory already show that the southern part of this space Dead Sea is not completely "bottomless", although its northern part goes against the longest exploration line for astronomers.
There is a similar, but less perfect, 'coal bag' in the Northern Hemisphere's constellation Cygnus, which, oddly enough, also contains a well-marked cross outlined by stars. This gap is located near the top of the cross.
It is best viewed with a squint, which highlights the contrast with the Milky Way, which is quite bright around it.
It doesn't have an eerie appeal to the eye like the southern 'coal bag' because it doesn't look like sheer blankness in the sky, but rather like a canopy with a black veil pulled over the stars. We will see the possible meaning of this appearance later.
Galaxy
Just above the southern horizon of our northern mid-latitudes, in summer, the Milky Way splits into giant cloud-like luminous bodies located above and between the constellations Scorpio and Sagittarius, with a significant combination of "coal bags", although none of them are large.
One of them, an obvious star cluster near the constellation Scorpius, M80, is interesting, the first of these strange objects. Perhaps it was precisely because of its proximity to M80 that he thought of the obvious connection with the star cluster of this vacancy, to which we have already referred.
But the most amazing "coal ladles" are those found in Sagittarius through photography. One of Barnard's earliest and most outstanding photographs includes two of them, both in the M8 cluster.
The larger one, with a roughly rectangular silhouette, contains a small star, while its smaller neighbor is moon-shaped – certainly the most peculiar form for such a celestial body. Both are associated with strange dark passages that pass through the star cluster like paths in the woods.
Along the boundaries of these trails, the stars are arranged in parallel, and what can be called the bottom of the trails is not entirely dark, but is a pebble made up of faint stellar points.
One of them bypasses two dark voids and crosses the cluster along the largest diameter, with lines of stars on the edges, reminiscent of the arrangement of trees on the side of the French highway. The length of this Avenue of Fame cannot be less than billions of miles! Around this star cluster, there is a star bed!
Around the cluster, the Milky Way's bed is strangely disturbed, and in some places it is almost stripped naked, as if its contents were raked off, forming huge piles and smaller stellar piles around it.
The famous "Trilobar Nebula" is also included in the scope of this image, which covers a truly fantastic area with its mix of nebulae, star clusters, star wars, starstreams, and dark voids so intricate that no description can do it justicely.
As chaotic as it may seem, there is a clear hint of unity, giving the impression that all the different pieces are somehow connected rather than accidentally thrown together. Miss Clark made a striking comment that the dim trail in M8 is maximally reflected in the huge fissure that divides the Milky Way, from Cygnus in the Northern Hemisphere all the way to the "Cross" in the Southern Hemisphere.
Similar channels are found in many other star clusters, which are usually lined up with stars on either side, similar in arrangement to the dense houses and villas on the roads that cross large cities.
But back to the black hole problem. Are they really windows in the cosmic star walls?
Some of them look as if they were caused by shells fired over glowing targets, allowing the eye to pass through the hole and enter the void outside. If science is cautiously silent on these things, what can a bolder, irresponsible imagination suggest?
For example, a huge "runaway sun", such as Aktros, would form such an opening if it crossed the galaxy like a projectile? This is at least a stimulating investigation.
Since its mass could be thousands of times greater than that of stars in the Milky Way, such a stellar missile would not be stopped by them, although its flight direction could be changed. It will drag small stars close to it out of their spheres, but the ultimate trend of its attraction will be to sweep them behind it, creating a star cluster rather than a void.
Those stars that are very close to it may be swept away in its impulse, becoming its satellites, flying away with it as it flies into outer space; But those stars that are farther away from it, and of course they will greatly outnumber the closer ones, will fly closer from all directions, like dust and leaves gathering behind a speeding motor, and will fill holes, if it is a hole. The asterism thus collected should be circular in outline and bounded by a relatively barren ring, which has been "sucked away".
In a general sense, the M8 cluster fits this description, but even if we explain its existence through the above hypothesis, black holes are still unexplained, unless we can use our imagination further to suggest that these stars are thrown into a giant vortex, or vortex system, whose vortex appears like a black hole.
Only a vortex-like movement can keep such a funnel open, because the proper motion of the star itself tends to fill it without taking into account the impulse from the projectile.
Perhaps some other causes of rotational motion can be found. As we will see when discussing spiral nebulae, cyclotron motion is very common throughout the universe, and the structure of the Milky Way alludes to them everywhere. But this is a dangerous sport even for the imagination – playing with the sun as if they were just thistle in the wind or a stopper in a millstone.
Another question arises: What is the thickness of the hedge that these holes penetrate?
Is the depth of the opening proportional to the width, and is the section of the Milky Way round like a rope, or is it flat and thin like a ribbon? The answer is not obvious, because we have little information about the relative distances of faint galactic stars.
Of course, openings in thin bands are easier to imagine than openings in huge rings, because in the first case they simply resemble cracks and breaks, and in the second they will resemble wells or holes.
The Milky Way is not a continuous object, but is made up of stars that are actually far away, which also provides another puzzle; In such a collective, persistent, well-defined pores are a priori, if not impossible, as passing through the straight and narrow pores of a swarm of bees.
The difficulty of these questions suggests why one thinks these seemingly voids, or many of them, are not openings at all, but opaque screens that cut off light from the stars behind them.
This is quite possible in some cases, as can be seen in Barnard's later photographs, especially those singular regions around the star Ophiuchus. Shady paths and patches can be seen here, apparently forming a connecting system covering a vast space, which its discoverers believe may constitute a "dark nebula".
This may seem like an amazing proposition at first; But, after all, why shouldn't they be dark nebulae, nor should they be visible nebulae?
In fact, some astronomers have struggled to explain the brightness of bright nebulae because we don't think that matter in such a diffused state can become an incandescent lamp by heating, and phosphorescence itself is a mystery.
This hypothesis is also consistent with our understanding of the existence of dark solid objects in space. Many bright stars are accompanied by inconspicuous companions, sometimes as massive as they themselves; Planets do not emit light; The same is true before meteors fall into the atmosphere and heat up due to friction.
And many reasonable reasons have been found to believe that space contains as many non-obvious objects as huge shiny objects. Well, it is not difficult to believe that there is a huge collection of dark gas and meteor dust, after all, their existence only manifests itself when intercepting the light from the luminous body behind them.
This would explain the apparent extinguishing of light in open space, as indicated by a decrease in the relative number of telescope stars below magnitude tenth. Even if this is the case now, the amount of light coming from a star that is too faint to be seen with the naked eye is so great that those unfamiliar with the intrinsic facts of astronomy are often surprised by its statement.
It is calculated that on a clear night, the total starlight from the entire celestial globe is equivalent to one-sixtieth of the full moon's light; But less than one-twenty-fifth of them are caused by stars that the eye distinguishes individually. If there were no obscured medium in space, then the amount of starlight would likely increase significantly, perhaps significantly.
But while it seems certain that some of the inconspicuous spots in the Milky Way are due to the presence of a "dark nebula," or some type of shelter, it's equally certain that there are many true pores, regardless of how they form and what forces they are maintained by.
These are veritable windows to the galaxy, and when people look out from these windows, they are confronted with the great mystery of infinite space. There, the known universe clearly ended, but apparently, space itself did not end. The power of thought cannot imagine the end of space, because when we think of a terminal point or line, the mind jumps farther.
There must be space both externally and internally. The eternity of time and the infinity of space are ideas that the intellect cannot fully grasp, but it cannot grasp the idea of limits on space or time. The metaphysical concept of hypergeometry, or four-dimensional space, does not help us.
Well, after discovering that the universe is a thing contained in something infinitely larger than itself; When we look out from its window and find that there is only the darkness of a starless night outside, what conclusions are we going to draw about the outside?
It seems as empty as a vacuum, but is it really so?
If so, then our universe is an atom in infinity; It is the only island in the ocean without a coast; It is an oasis in the middle of an endless desert. The Milky Way, then, and its wide garland of stars, is like a tiny smoke ring floating in the horror of immeasurably empty emptiness, or it is a short, lonely, shiny ring of foam tossed in boundless waves.
From such conclusions, the mind instinctively withdraws. It prefers to think that something is out there, even though we can't see it. Even the universe can't stand loneliness – a Cruso lost in the universe.
Like the inhabitants of the most elegant castles, with gardens, parks and hordes of attendants, if they did not know that they had neighbors, though invisible, and an infinite world of living surrounded them, they would die of loneliness.
Is there anything more terrifying than thinking of an isolated universe? The greater the being, the greater the aversion to seclusion. Only something infinite can be satisfied; Only in it can the mind rest.
Therefore, we have to believe that the cosmic night that hangs over us is not meaningless; When we gaze out the starry window of the Milky Way and see only uniform black, it's a problem with our eyes, or due to a medium occlusion. Since our universe has a limited scope, there must be other universes on all sides of it.
Perhaps, if we can take our telescope to the edge of the big "coal bag" near the "cross", when we are on the border of our galaxy, we will be able to find some outer galaxies shimmering in the vast night.
They may be greater than ours, just as many of the suns around us are much larger than ours. If we could stand somewhere in the vastness and look around with an infinite view, we might see countless star systems in which our stars would go unnoticed, like one of the many stars shining in the land sky on a clear night.
Some may be garland-shaped, like our own; Some may be globular, like the large star clusters of Hercules and Centauri; Some may be shiny circles, or discs, or rings in the middle.
If we could get into them, we might find that their composition is very different, including elements unknown to geochemistry; Because while the visible universe seems to contain very little matter that does not exist on Earth or in the sun, we have no reason to assume that other matter may not exist in infinite space.
And what about gravity? We don't know if gravity works outside the visible universe, but there is reason to think it does. In any case, if we let go of its supportive hand, we will be lost and can only wander hopelessly in our speculations, like children who have gone astray.
If the empire of gravity is infinite, then the different external systems must have some, albeit imperceptible by our standards, attractive to each other, because gravity never lets go of its hand, no matter how much space it needs to function.
Just as the stars around us are moving, galaxies outside our line of sight may also be moving, and our system as a whole may be moving with them. If so, then after endless years, aspects of the whole system must change, and its members have a new place relative to each other.
Over time, we can even assume that our universe will be relatively close to one of the others; Then, if people were still living on Earth, they might catch a glimpse of the lights of another approaching star system through an opening that now knows nothing to us, like a signal from an unfamiliar squadron, giving them assurance (which can only be an inference at the moment) that there are other adventurers in the ocean of space in its endless vastness.
There is also a problem, that is, the luminous ether, through which light waves pass through space. Ether is as mysterious as gravity. Regarding ether, we can only infer its existence from the effects we give it.
Obviously, ether must extend to the most distant visible star. But does it continue indefinitely in outer space?
If so, then the invisibility of other systems must be due to their distance reducing the amount of light coming from them below the perceptible limit, or due to the intervention of the absorbing medium.
If not, then the reason we can't see them is due to the lack of means to deliver light waves, just as the lack of an interplanetary atmosphere prevents us from hearing the thunder of sunspots.
Interestingly, Mr. Edison had intended to build a giant microphone that would make sunspots' roar audible by converting electrical vibrations into sound waves.
In this hypothesis, each galaxy would be shrouded in its own ethersphere, and no light could travel from one galaxy to another. But the possibility is that ether and gravity are ubiquitous, and all star systems are immersed in the former, like phosphorescent bioclouds in the ocean.
Thus, astronomy brings people's minds from higher places to higher places. People accepted early evidence of the relative insignificance of the Earth; They were more quick to believe in the relative insignificance of the solar system; And now, the evidence is blowing at their reason, and what they think of as the universe is nothing more than a speck of dust shining in the infinite sunlight.