A Jewel Box in the Sky

A Jewel Box in the Sky

There is something puzzling. Observations with a sensitive radio antenna carried near the top of the Earth’s atmosphere in a U-2 aircraft have shown that the background radiation is, to first approximation, just as intense in all directions – as if the fireball of the Bing Bang expanded quite uniformly, an origin of the universe with a very precise symmetry.

But the background radiation, when examined to finer precision, proves to be imperfectly symmetrical. There is a small systematic effect that could be understood if the entire Milky Way Galaxy (and presumably other members of the Local Group) were streaking toward the Virgo cluster of galaxies at more than a million miles an hour (600 kilometres per second). At such a rate, we will reach it in ten billion years, and extragalactic astronomy will then be a great deal easier.

Why should we be rushing toward the Virgo cluster? (Quotations from Megan Jorgensen, image: © Elena)

The Virgo cluster is already the richest collection of galaxies known replete with spirals and elliptical and irregulars, a jewel box in the sky.

George Smoot and his colleagues, who made these high-altitude observations, suggest that the Milky Way is being gravitationally dragged toward the center of Virgo cluster; that the cluster has many more galaxies than have been detected heretofore; and, most startling, that the cluster is of immense proportions, stretching across one or two billion light-years of space.

Some myth from the Pacific Basin and other lands. These myths are tributes to human audacity. The chief difference between then and our modern scientific myth of the Big Bang is that science is self-questioning, and that we can perform experiments and observation to test our ideas. But those other creation stories are worthy of our deep respect:

“First there was the great cosmic egg. Inside the egg was chaos, and floating in chaos was P’an Ku, the Undeveloped, the divine Embryo. And P’an Ku burst out of the egg, four times larger than any man today, with a hammer and chisel in his hand with which he fashioned the world” (The P’an Ku myths, China, around third century).

No Arean sat alone in space as a cloud that floats in nothingness. He slept not, for there was no sleep; he hungered not, for as yet there was no hunger. Se he remained for a great while, until a thought came to his mind. He said to himself, “I will make a thing” (a myth form Maiana. Gilbert Islands.

Before heaven and earth had taken form all was vague and amorphous… That which was clear and light drifted up to become heaven, while that which was heavy and turbide solidified to become earth. It was very easy for the pure, fine material to come together, but extremely difficult for the heavy, turbid material to solidify. Therefore heaven was completed first and earth assumed shape after. When heaven and earth were joined in emptiness and all was unwrought simplicity, then without having been created things came into being. This was the Great Oneness. All things issued from this Oneness but all became different (Huai-nan tzu, China, around first century B.C.).

A Jewel box in the Sky. Illustration by Elena.