Galactic Filaments

Recent discoveries have caused cosmologists to rethink the structure of the Milky Way. In the last two years, they've found mysterious filaments along the spiral arms of the galaxy that are made up of dense regions of star formation.  Perhaps even more intriguing is that they align with the magnetic field of the galaxy.  The field itself seems to challenge our conventional ideas about magnetism.  It flows toward the center of the galaxy on some arms, and outward on others.  We aren't used to thinking of magnets creating reverse spiral fields like this; to my knowledge a galaxy is the only thing in nature that has dipoles spiraling toward and away from each other. 

Magnets essentially work in two ways: permanent and electromotive.  In order for a magnetic field to exist, there needs to be some configuration of electrons propagating it, whether it be electric current or just plain electric charge.  Electromotive magnetism already has a current creating it, such as the type you'd see in a generator.  In a permanent magnet, such as a regular iron bar magnet, there is no electric current; rather, the angular momentum of the electrons are aligned so that it creates the illusion of current.  This illusion has mystified scientists for centuries, and many of them today still have a hard time explaining this fundamental force. 

In these galactic filaments there clearly aren't any freeways of current running through their dense clouds of dust.  Therefore, the magnetism created by our galaxy has to be permanent (unless there's a third form of magnetism we aren't aware of yet).  The illusion of current created by the permanent magnet makes one wonder how this force can operate over such long distances.  Forget about the force between bar magnets, which is amazing in itself; the force between particles thousands of light-years away from each other is nothing short of remarkable. 

All I can surmise is that the dust left over from supernova explosions must have a high number of conductive atoms in them, like iron.  The special property of conductors used to generate current, or quasi (static) current, is probably what allowed these filaments to form.  They tend to form wherever the density of this nebulous dust is greatest, which makes sense because most of it is made of supernova remnants.  There is also a great amount of hydrogen and helium around the filaments, which must be gathered in by gravitational clogs: i.e., dense nodes where gravity is stronger than in outlying regions.  All these things are probably what create the ideal parameters for star formation.  Considering that, I might be persuaded that iron in new stars- at least in the ones we see being born today- won't come about after eons of fusion into heavy elements in star cores, as is traditionally thought.  But that it is already a key element in star formation, and probably settles in the core of these stars once it is born.  I can't say whether this is true for our own star, but if its ingredients came from the remnant of a supernova then perhaps its iron was already in the core when it began fusing hydrogen into helium. 

One way of tying all this together is by considering dark matter and magnetism to be different ways of explaining the same thing. Permanent magnetism may also be using Quantum Entanglement in ways that only dark matter could explain (if we had access to studying it).  I find it an unlikely coincidence that magnetism is influenced by the angular momentum of electrons while dark matter influences the angular momentum of whole galaxies.  This connection would suggest that dark matter as a whole may be describing magnetism on an ultra large scale.  There's even a fractal that emerges if you consider these galactic filaments as being made of the same material as the filaments between galaxies.  The filaments between galaxies are famously thought to be made of dark matter, so it wouldn't surprise me if cosmologists find these interior filaments behaving in ways that depend on their exterior "parents".  In such a scenario, in an almost eerie way, the dark matter would creep into our galaxy using these magnetic filaments, do a dance with the black hole at the center for a while, then make its way out of the galaxy and back into the exterior filament, where it would travel along to the next galaxy down the line.* 

 
*I say this is eerie because electrochemicals interact with neurons across a human brain in a similar way. 

Mysterious Stellar Void in the Milky Way

    Astronomers have found a void around the center of the Milky Way that is absent of any young stars.  The area extends out about 8,000 light years from the center of the galaxy.  Here is a nice artist's rendition of the distribution:




    Even with telescopes, we can't see this Cepheid desert very well because it is covered by space dust.  An international team of astronomers, led by Professor Noriyuki Matsunaga, was able to analyze this region using a telescope that detects stellar objects in the infrared.  They found that while this region has plenty of old stars, there aren't any new ones being born.  However, in the very center of the galaxy- the region extending out to about 150 light years- there appears to be a ring of new stars revolving around the center.
    The finding boggles the mind and challenges our conventional ideas about the formation of the Milky Way.  It would make sense if the entire center was void of new stars, seeing as older stars would have had more time to spiral in towards the galaxy's center. But that ring around the center challenges any alternate theory that could have been proposed.

More information can be found at the Cornell University Library:
http://arxiv.org/abs/1606.07943

Creation, Gore Vidal

Meet Cyrus Spitama, the grandson of Zoroaster and close friend of the ruthless king of Persia, Xerxes I. Never mind the historical inaccuracy of that single relation (for Zoroaster lived more than a millennium prior to Xerxes)- the rest of the novel doesn't have any, as far as I can tell. Seeing as the rest of the book is as historically accurate as Herodotus was biased, surely this accident was intended by Gore Vidal for reasons I'm not entirely aware. Rest assured, the story is set in the golden age of the Greek-Persian wars, a period when Greek philosophy and four of the world's most influential religions were revolutionizing thought. 

Cyrus is a witty priest of the only monotheistic religion of the east at the time. He's at his most clever when taking shots at the Greeks, whom a large part of the story revolves around. In fact, his whole narration is being recorded by Democritus, who is arguably the most famous of the pre-Socratic philosophers, and the first to propose an atomic theory for the creation of the universe. And that's where Creation starts: as a sort of interplay between the scientific interpretation of beginnings and the religious one. It also provides a fresh perspective of 5th century BC history because it is seen from the eyes of a Persian rather than a Greek. Let's face it, Greek civilization has been glamorized by historical writers to no end, just like the Shakespearean era in literature. Vidal must have been weary of all the Greek ass-kissing that western civilization has done. His motivation was clearly to put a spin on Herodotus' nationalist buggery by entering the mind of an intellectual Persian who has nothing but disdain for Greek life, and it worked wonderfully well. 

Other civilizations are visited by Cyrus, as he's appointed emissary of trade for the Persian empire, but really ends up as an archivist for creation theories. His fate is linked to the pioneers of religious thought in an almost magical way; throughout the book he's always finding himself in situations that give him the opportunity to discuss matters of creation with the wisest of sages. One civilization he visits is India, where he meets Mahavira, an influential Jain, and Siddhartha Guatama, the founder of Buddhism. Another place he is sent to is Cathay (ancient word for China), where he discusses the origins of creation with the founders of Taoism and Confucianism: Lao Tzu and Confucius, respectively. These discussions are in my eyes the strongest parts of the book, and the most memorable. Cyrus' inquisitive nature always makes it a challenge for sages firmly set in their teachings, but they all seem to enjoy his company and his mutual interest in the causation of things. 

If creationism doesn't interest you, at least consider reading this for its entertaining anecdotes on political savagery. Most of the book details all the hideous maneuverings of those seeking power in these civilizations, which by no means makes them weaker parts. Amusingly, the book reads like the madness of the Julio-Claudian dynasty at times (I Claudius is the book to read for those goodies). For that reason, bloodthirsty Game of Thrones fans might enjoy it as much as lofty professors in comparative religion. Pericles, Cyrus the Great, and especially Darius are all given fair treatment here, as well as all the barons and nobles of India and Cathay that I've failed to recall. 

The Cosmic Web, J. Richard Gott

I'm reading J. Richard Gott's book, The Cosmic Web.  Fascinating stuff.  He's not a bad lecturer either.  He specializes in Dark Energy and what it might mean about the fate of the universe.  I'm with him on the Equation of State being greater than -1, which would indicate that the universe will end in a series of Big Crunch singularities.  But like him, I am open to other possibilities, such as w being -1 or less, in which case the universe would continually be recycled in bubble universes, or end with a Big Rip (though the idea that all matter in the universe could rip apart is disturbing). 

It's funny, I hadn't even known about these Equations of State until reading his book.  Yet two of my theories generally describe two of the equations.  If w=-1 it describes the Black Hole Hyperspace (my last post).  If w > -1 it describes the Multiverse Manifold Theory.  Keep in mind that I wasn't as familiar with Dark Energy or the Cosmological Constant when writing these.  A critical element absent from these posts is the Cosmological Constant: a measure of the ratio between pressure and density that permeates all of vacuum space.  In the Black Hole Hyperspace, the ratio is -1 (negative because we are describing the repelling nature of Dark Energy), and in the MMT Big Crunch scenario it is greater than -1. 

Something else I stumbled upon is Quintessence: a proposed fifth fundamental force of physics. It states the value of w changes over time, and is therefore a force of its own, since it has nothing to do with gravity.  Even if the Cosmological Constant is changing- in which case we should refer to it as the “Cosmological Variable”- we wouldn't be able to measure it for a very long time.  But we are inching closer to pegging the value of w.  Right now, the results suggest it's in the range of -.95 to -1, with increasing accuracy the closer it gets to -1.