Why aren't we all focused on the really earth-shattering news?
March 04, 2005 Edition 1
John Scott
The most amazing things have happened in the past two weeks - or at least been reported - yet daily life just continues as if they hadn't. I refer to occurrences cosmological.
I've always been a sucker for astronomical sensation whose only possible response among laymen can be "Gee whiz!", "Wow!" and "Crikey, I hope not in my lifetime!"
Many years ago I taught myself how to identify most of the more important stars and constellations in the night sky so that I could detect any significant changes. But they all seemed to stick to their usual positions.
Latterly I have been attending UCT summer school courses on cosmology. I like to keep abreast of what is happening elsewhere in the universe, even if the event was 10 billion years ago.
We get to know about it much later because, unlike local gossip, the information can travel to us only as fast as light. But at that speed, the following phenomena have been reported in the past fortnight:
The x-rays are so faint that the astronomical satellite could pick up only one photon, or particle of light, every 2.5 minutes, having dragged itself through space, like a Comrades runner on his last legs.
The object, a neutron star only 20km in diameter, is in the constellation of Sagittarius, which doesn't surprise me, a Sagittarian, at all. We all have a bit of a problem sustaining our brilliance.
The good news is that we have 24 years left, in case anything goes wrong. The bad news is that it is due on Friday the 13th, in April.
All this is mind-concentrating stuff, yet the headlines are still about minor, mundane matters such as national budgets, racist judges, Schabir Shaik's eccentric bookkeeping, sports quotas and Zimbabwe's allegedly free and fair election.
I forgot to mention that the Andromeda galaxy is moving towards us and is expected to swallow us all up within a few million years. So long as the prospect doesn't spoil your weekend.
E-mail: johnvscott@mweb.co.za
