Galaxy: Unexplored Continent

Galaxy: Unexplored Continent

The Galaxy is an unexplored continent filled with exotic beings of stellar dimensions. We have made a preliminary reconnaissance and have encountered some of the inhabitants. A few of them resemble beings we know. Others are bizarre beyond our most unconstrained fantasies. But we are at the very beginning of our exploration. Past voyages of discovery suggest that many of the most interesting inhabitants of the galactic continent remain as yet unknown and unanticipated.

Not far outside the Galaxy there are almost certainly planets, orbiting stars in the Magellanic Clouds and in the globular clusters that surround the Milky Way. Such enormous worlds would offer a breathtaking view of the Galaxy rising – an enormous spiral form comprising 400 billion stellar inhabitants, with collapsing gas clouds, condensing planetary systems, luminous supergiants, stable middle-aged stars, red giants, white dwarfs, planetary nebulae, novae, supernovae, neutron stars and black holes.

Nuclear fire. Stick People Figures on a Beach in a Nuclear Fire. Mosaic © Elena

It would be clear from such a world, as it is beginning to be clear from ours, how our matter, our form and much of our character is determined by the deep connection between life and the Cosmos.

The observable universe itself is only a few tens of billions of light-years across and, if there is a vast supercluster in the Virgo group, perhaps there are other such superclusters at much greater distances, which are correspondingly more difficult to detect.

For unknown ages after the explosive outpouring of matter and energy of the Big Bang, the Cosmos was without form. There were no galaxies, no planets, no life. Deep, impenetrable darkness was everywhere, hydrogen atoms in the void. Here and there denser accumulations of gas were imperceptibly growing, globes of matter were condening – hydrogen raindrops more massive than suns. Within these globes of gas was first kindled the nuclear fire latent in matter. Then, a first generation of stars was born, flooding the Cosmos with light.