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On cosmic activity extending from Draco

 

Imagine the extension of the seventh ray cosmic kundalini particularly at this time of Aquarian energies and of the coming to power of the seventh ray in this astrological age and this our seventh solar system. Five of the seven are of greater magnitude than our own with only one other of the same magnitude or order approximately and occultly speaking as our own seventh ray Cosmic Physical Base centre or system. Our system being one of the seven jewels or “Dzenodoo” of the cosmic crown or cosmic head centre of the OAWNMBS. With reverent caution though, DK tells us that not even our planetary logos comprehends the function in completeness of the constellations. However as indicated DK says of the following “it was the dragon-influence or the “serpent energy” which caused the influx of manasic or mind energy into the solar system.”

 

Not only ceremonial order and law as you know but the stimulation of the sacral centre in the short term over stimulating humanity. One cannot but wonder as to the nefarious advantage the black lodge will try to take in this regard. However their influence will be comparatively short and of the white magicians somewhat longer. And so the influence will stimulate the higher and lower serpent energy with the higher stimulating perhaps with this timely cosmic electrical input from Draconis just prior to the 2025 crescendo of mansic stimulation [particularly stimulating the “jewel in the lotus”] recently mentioned here.

 

Hierarchy will of course be taking full advantage in line with the plan of our PL. “Tremendous stimulation of the second ray Wisdom aspect in graded and group initiation discussed by Master DK and AAB.” We must note the attributes of the Dragon or Draconis are ‘Wise compassion’ of a cosmic nature in ‘Earth Service’ stimulating most interestingly the Wisdom aspect on earth similar to the manasic stimulation of a lord of compassion on Sirius. There is much to think of here. JPC.

 

“Râhu (Sk.). A Daitya (demon) whose lower parts were like a dragon’s tail. He made himself immortal by robbing the gods of some Amrita– the elixir of divine life–for which they were churning the ocean of milk. Unable to deprive him of his immortality, Vishnu exiled him from the earth and made of him the constellation Draco, his head being called Râhu and his tail Ketu–astronomically, the ascending and descending nodes. With the latter appendage he has ever since waged a destructive war on the denouncers of his robbery, the sun and the moon, and (during the eclipses) is said to swallow them. Of course the fable has a mystic and occult meaning.” TG.

 

“The seven-headed serpent has more than one signification in the Arcane teachings. It is the seven-headed Draco, each of whose heads is a star of the Lesser Bear; but it was also, and pre-eminently, the Serpent of Darkness (i.e., inconceivable and incomprehensible) whose seven heads were the seven Logoi, the reflections of the one and first manifested Light — the universal LOGOS.” SD1 411.

Solar Systems

Perfection via seven systems…

 

The Yellow appears as DK described as the result of the fruition of the harvest and also of ‘previous activity’. The yellow and blue of the previous system produced the green of activity as per hinted by DK in that system.

 

My current personal thoughts then are that the yellow was of the third minor system proper, coming into the first major to be blended with the blue, also of a previous system, to merge with and produce the major green of activity.

 

I correlate this as, the advanced guard [fruits] of humanity coming from the previous system of activity/green, thus its fruits and harvest born under difficult circumstance, however some became again retarded evolutionarily and consciously speaking, reverting to the unblended yellow of the second minor system, with little or no orange/red hue.

 

Failure to “merge” occultly speaking with the rest of humanity at the correct time and subsequently and here hypothetically indicates the ‘failures’ to merge as the green of activity into the indigo blue and thus reverting to the yellow [dissolution] of the third minor system and as a minor group in fact. This is only symbolic in many regards though as DK did say that the core Jewish group were stagnated in the astrological sign and age of Aries. This should be thoughtfully pondered by all students.

 

The first ray system will be major and the final system being minor and synthesizing. The six and seventh systems would then be ones of synthesising the qualities and life of the previous ones much as the sixth and seventh races do. This holds a valuable analogy and correspondence to the sixth solar system which is also the third from the view of the major egoic cycles. Our following third [sixth] and final major system will demonstrate the synthetic integration of the egoic cycles with the seventh system demonstrating complete synthesis of all the seven solar systems.

 

Once the major systems have unfolded and born fruit in the third Major ‘6’ or third SS then a threefold period is required to regenerate and assimilate energetically to once again demonstrate the fruits, qualities and life in one remaining synthetic solar system which is a system of life synthesis and perfection. This solar system is the seventh from the angle of vision of the lesser cycles which are not Major cycles of solar evolution. I have here bolded the seventh as synthesising ALL and with underlinement to distinguish it from the three MAJOR systems.

 

Systems one, two, three and seven are not counted as MAJOR Systems of egoic unfoldment or spiritual evolution. This is a defining point to be considered as the lesser cycles may be viewed as “periods of lesser activity, periodically viewed.” The periods of lesser activity of evolution on the three lower systemic planes or some part of the physical body of the solar system and are not compared proportionally with the periods of greater or Major activity of egoic evolution of the Solar logos or the threefold development of consciousness. The 6 and 7th are synthesising because the 6th is the synthesising of the major systems and the seventh of the fruit of all the systems.

 

S Systems: 1234567 =28 = 10 or the perfect Decad.

 

Three solar systems represent “highest, intermediate and lowest, and the three form but one expression” and are to be reversed here. These major periods of egoic unfoldment are the result of the cyclic turning of a monadic cosmic wheel and may be regarded as a major revolution spanning three major solar systems and is the monadic correspondence to a cosmic wheel and the cyclic appearance of the fourth Creative Hierarchy. The seventh lesser cycle of synthesis is one of demonstration of perfected life expression and perfectly expresses the key 4+3=7 as the four lesser and three Major cycles of evolution. JPC.

 

“The fact of the turning of the monadic Wheel covering the period of three solar systems” TCF 1089.

 

The fact that although this is the second solar system from the standpoint of the egoic cycles of the Logos, or His second major egoic cycle, yet it is the fifth when viewed from another angle, that of the lesser cycles. TCF 861.

 

There will be seven systems, though we are only concerned with the major three, of which our present solar system is but the second. TCF 1254.

 

“Yellow is another of the colors that have come to us from system 1. The blending of blue and of yellow in that system had much to do with the production of activity. Yellow harmonizes, it marks completion and fruition. Note how in autumn, when the processes of Nature have run their course and the cycle is complete, the yellow of the autumn is spread upon the landscape. Note also that when the sun pours unimpeded down the yellow of the harvest is also to be seen… Blue and yellow blended result in green, and the synthetic blue or indigo (the love and wisdom aspect) dominates when the plane of harmony is reached. It leads then to the third plane of atma whereon the green of activity predominates… ” LOM 215.

 

DK said, in three aspects of the Will “lies germinating the seed of the next solar system.” This brought back to mind [again] the three minor solar systems prior to the first major one of the third ray and green colour. I simply relate ‘germination of a solar system initiating in those two minor ones resulting in the first Major SS. This will have its ramifications in colour.

 

So specifically, were the yellow and blue first blending or occurring in the two minor systems, say blue second and yellow third minor, then blending fully in the first major system, to produce in that system the Green of activity as a secondary, the yellow being a base and “irreducible”.

 

System 1 saw blue yellow blending as primary and “irreducible” colour or ray energy and the green in their blending [being then secondary as blended from the blue yellow] produced the still blending and blended activity of the third ray system so the blue and yellow may have perhaps emerged from the three or two minor systems prior to the first major system. Its a hypothetical consideration. When DK and HPB gives yellow as active intelligence they gives the primary irreducible 1st colour of activity. Green is the secondary and blended colour indicating previous activity of that time. JPC.

 

 

 

The Laniakea supercluster of galaxies

 

 

Laniakea_supercluster_480px-300x171

 

 

There is a good video animation/superimposition type here and we see we have other super clusters of galaxies around us. To me this is a great expansion of our view and could be seen as a supercluster and an atom, one of the many atoms in the body of the ‘great entity in time and space’ of the ‘entire vault of the heavens’. In the video we do see the computer generated passage of galaxies into our super cluster or “galaxies of stars” as DK terms it. All part of the great universal spiritual evolution, and marriage in the heavens. JPC.

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v513/n7516/full/nature13674.html#videos  7min

http://www.skyandtelescope.com/astronomy-news/laniakea-home-supercluster-09032014/

Space is an entity and the entire “vault of heaven” (as it has been poetically called) is the phenomenal appearance of that entity.” EA 8.  

“As regards cosmic position, relation and limitation, little can be said, as e’en to the Heavenly Men Themselves the matter is obscure. That this is necessarily so must be apparent when Their place in the scheme of things is realized and Their relative unimportance is considered. Therefore, we can do no more than accept the fact of the inconceivable magnitude of that EXISTENCE which is manifesting through seven solar systems, and the extension of this concept of Being to embrace the entire vault of the Heavens. It is interesting to bear in mind in this connection that all that is seen, being objective forms or Beings in manifestation through certain spheres of light, may not be all that IS, but that there may lie back of everything visible a vast realm or realms of Existences. The very brain of man reels in contemplation of such a concept. Yet just as there are tens of millions of human beings out of objective manifestation, or discarnate, on the subtler planes of the solar system, so there may be cosmic entities, in rank equal to the ONE ABOUT WHOM NAUGHT MAY BE SAID, Who are in a similar sense discarnate, and found in realms subtler than that of the manifestation of light.” TCF 412. 

“The old Commentary expresses this obscure truth as follows:

The one wheel turns. One turn alone is made, and every sphere, and suns of all degrees, follow its course. The night of time is lost in it, and kalpas measure less than seconds in the little day of man.

Ten million millions kalpas pass, and twice ten million millions Brahmic cycles and yet one hour of cosmic time is not completed.

Within the wheel, forming that wheel, are all the lesser wheels from the first to the tenth dimension. These in their cyclic turn hold in their spheres of force other and lesser wheels. Yet many suns compose the cosmic One.

Wheels within wheels, spheres within spheres. Each pursues his course and attracts or rejects his brother, and yet cannot escape from the encircling arms of the mother.

When the wheels of the fourth dimension, of which our sun is one and all that is of lesser force and higher number, such as the eighth and ninth degrees, turn upon themselves, devour each other, and turn and rend their mother, then will the cosmic wheel be ready for a faster revolution.”

It will, therefore, be apparent that the power of man to conceive of these whirling constellations, to measure their interaction, and to realize their essential unity is not as yet great enough. We are told that even to the liberated Dhyan Chohan the mystery of that which lies beyond his own solar Ring-Pass-Not is hid.

Certain influences indicate to Him and certain lines of force demonstrate to Him the fact that some constellations are knit with His system in a close and corporate union. We know that the Great Bear, the Pleiades, Draco or the Dragon are in some way associated with the solar system but as yet He knows not their function nor the nature of the other constellations. It must also be remembered that the turning of our tiny systemic wheel, and the revolution of a cosmic wheel can be hastened, or retarded, by influences emanating from unknown or unrealized constellations whose association with a systemic or a cosmic Logos is as mysterious relatively as the effect individuals have upon each other in the human family. This effect is hidden in logoic karma and is beyond the ken of man.” TCF 1085.

 

 

Stars Mizar and Alcor

 

 

 

mizar_alcor_cropped-300x214



http://earthsky.org/brightest-stars/mizar-and-alcor-the-horse-and-rider

JPC: The star Mizar is not one star but a double binary orbiting each another, along with Alcor which is also binary and orbiting Mizar.  Thus they from a constellation of six stars and along with our Solar Logos, forms a constellation of at least seven stars.

In 2009 astronomers concluded that gravitational attraction exists between the Alcor binary and Mizar quad systemsMizar and the other Rishie’s are referred to in occultism as ‘lead’ stars and as being ‘not planetary’. This speaks to the fact that they have no planets orbiting them but often have another star in orbit with them.

Mizar A and B are the major stars that form the chief component of the second ray lead RishieBinary stars are not uncommon and some estimates state that they are 60% higher in ratio than single stars.

Mizar A and Mizar B, are themselves binary stars!But, the companions are too close to be directly observed as separate stars, even by the largest telescopes

 

 

mizarA_npoi

 

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap970219.html 

DK states “it must be added that the third type of motion to which our system is subjected, that of progress onward, is the result of the united activity of the seven constellations (our solar system forming one of the seven)”. This hints at the attraction existing between the seven constellation that compose the seven leading stars of the Great Bear and our system. He states… the “type of motion to which our system is subjected” and this indicates that our solar system forming one of the seven constellations, is subject to, note that word, the united drift and influence of the seven constellations. 

He clearly informs us that our Solar System forms one of the seven constellations and therefore is part of a constellation with one of the great Richie’s and its other allied constellational stars i.e. Alcor a binary and Mizar a quad double binary system. Mizar and Alcor are ‘both members of the Ursa Major Moving Group’ as astronomically accepted, and here we recall DK’ words “the leading stars of seven constellations which turn around with the Great Bear”. This paper considers how our solar system is part of “forming” a constellation of stars in accordance with the teaching of the Tibetan Master.

“3.  “The first ‘seven stars’ are not planetary. They are the leading stars of seven constellations which turn around with the Great Bear (S.D. Vol. III, 195) EA Appendix 656.

“the place of our system and its electrical relationship with the seven constellations” TCF 476. 

“a world of being and of consciousness which lies behind our solar system, and which themselves come from the seven constellations which form the body of manifestation of the One About Whom Naught May Be Said. Our solar system is one of these seven constellations.” EP1 332. 

“the seven constellations (our solar system forming one of the seven) which form the seven centers of the cosmic Logos.” TCF 1059. 

the Alcor binary system is gravitationally bound to the Mizar quadruple system”.

 

Mizar and Alcor, famous double star, really six stars

 

Mizar and its fainter companion star Alcor are located in the handle of the Big Dipper. They are one of the sky’s easiest-to-spot double stars.

On April evenings, the Big Dipper is in the northeast. The famous star Mizar is second to the end of the Dipper’s handle. Look closely, and you’ll see Alcor right next to Mizar.

Located in the handle of the Big Dipper, Mizar (brighter) and Alcor (fainter) are one of the most famous visual double stars in the sky. Image via ESO Online Digitized Sky Survey

Mizar and its fainter companion star Alcor are one of the most famous double stars in the sky. You’ll spot Mizar first, as the middle star of the Big Dipper’s handle. Look closely, and you’ll see Alcor right next to Mizar. 
Mizar and Alcor appear so closely linked in our sky’s dome that they’re often said to be a test of eyesight. But in fact even people with less than perfect eyesight can see the two stars, especially if they’re looking in a dark clear sky. This pair of stars in the Big Dipper’s handle is famously called “the horse and rider.” If you can’t see fainter Alcor with the unaided eye, use binoculars to see Mizar’s nearby companion.
Mizar is perhaps the Big Dipper’s most famous star, glorified in the annals of astronomy many times over. Apart from Alcor, Mizar in itself became known a double star in 1650. In fact, it was the first double star to be seen through a telescope. 
Few, if any, astronomers back then even dreamed that double stars were anything other than chance alignments of physically unrelated stars. Yet, in 1889, an instrument called a spectroscope revealed that Mizar’s brighter telescopic component consisted of two stars – making Mizar the first binary star ever discovered by spectroscopic means. 
At a later date, Mizar’s dimmer telescopic component also showed itself to be a spectroscopic binary, meaning that Mizar consists of two sets of binaries – making it a quadruple star. 
As for Alcor, it was long believed that Mizar and Alcor were not gravitationally bound and did not form a true binary star system. In 2009, though, two groups of astronomers independently reported that Alcor actually is itself a binary, consisting of Alcor A and Alcor B. Astronomers now believe that the Alcor binary system is gravitationally bound to the Mizar quadruple system – making six stars in all, where we see only two with the eye.
Thus Mizar and Alcor not only test eyesight, but the limits of our technological vision as well.
Bottom line: Mizar and Alcor are one of the most famous double stars in the sky. You can spot them easily in the handle of the Big Dipper. Mizar is really four stars, and Alcor is really two stars. So what we see as two stars are really six in one!

 

 

 

 

Sombrero Galaxy 800 billion suns

 

DK: “Galaxies of stars” …Messier 104 (M104) the rich Virgo cluster of galaxies.

 

NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has trained its razor-sharp eye on one of the universe’s most stately and photogenic galaxies, the Sombrero galaxy, Messier 104 (M104). The galaxy’s hallmark is a brilliant white, bulbous core encircled by the thick dust lanes comprising the spiral structure of the galaxy. As seen from Earth, the galaxy is tilted nearly edge-on. We view it from just six degrees north of its equatorial plane. This brilliant galaxy was named the Sombrero because of its resemblance to the broad rim and high-topped Mexican hat.
At a relatively bright magnitude of +8, M104 is just beyond the limit of naked-eye visibility and is easily seen through small telescopes. The Sombrero lies at the southern edge of the rich Virgo cluster of galaxies and is one of the most massive objects in that group, equivalent to 800 billion suns. The galaxy is 50,000 light-years across and is located 28 million light-years from Earth.


Credit:
NASA/ESA and The Hubble Heritage Team STScI/AURA)


http://www.spacetelescope.org/images/opo0328a/ 


 

 

 

 

 

The Dog Star, Sirius A, and its tiny companion

 

Sirius B, a white dwarf, is very faint because of its tiny size, only 12,000 kilometres in diameter. White dwarfs are the leftover remnants of stars similar to our Sun. They have exhausted their nuclear fuel sources and have collapsed down to a very small size. Sirius B is about 10,000 times fainter than Sirius A. The white dwarf’s feeble light makes it a challenge to study, because its light is swamped in the glare of its brighter companion as seen from telescopes on Earth. However, using the keen eye of Hubble’s Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS), astronomers have now been able to isolate the light from Sirius B and disperse it into a spectrum. STIS measured light from Sirius B being stretched to longer, redder wavelengths due to the white dwarf’s powerful gravitational pull. Based on those measurements, astronomers have calculated Sirius B’s mass at 98 percent that of our Sun. Analysis of the white dwarf’s spectrum also has allowed astronomers to refine the estimate for its surface temperature to about 25,000 C.
 
Accurately determining the masses of white dwarfs is fundamentally important to understanding stellar evolution. Our Sun will eventually become a white dwarf. White dwarfs are also the source of Type Ia supernova explosions, which are used to measure cosmological distances and the expansion rate of the universe. Measurements based on Type Ia supernovae are fundamental to understanding “dark energy” , a dominant repulsive force stretching the universe apart. Also, the method used to determine the white dwarf’s mass relies on one of the key predictions of Einstein’s theory of General Relativity: that light loses energy when it attempts to escape the gravity of a compact star.
This image was taken 15 Oct., 2003, with Hubble’s Wide Field Planetary Camera 2. Based on detailed measurements of the position of Sirius B in this image, astronomers were then able to point the STIS instrument exactly on the white dwarf and make the measurements to determine its gravitational redshift and mass.


Credit:
NASAESA, H. Bond (STScI), and M. Barstow (University of Leicester

 

 

 

Galaxies of stars:  …Messier 104 (M104) the rich Virgo cluster of galaxies

“A foundation in strength according to the weight of the mass”… a Black Hole



Although we have a pretty good idea that our galaxy contains a supermassive black hole at its core, there could be another — albeit rather exotic — explanation for our observations of Sagittarius A*. It might be a wormhole. This is according to two researchers who explore the possibility in a new paper submitted to the arXiv pre-print service. Although their work is purely theoretical, Zilong Li and Cosimo Bambi of Fudan University in Shanghai have identified a specific emission signature surrounding their hypothetical wormhole, a signature that may be detected by a sophisticated instrument that will soon be attached to one of the world’s most powerful telescopes.


ANALYSIS: Wormhole Time Travel ‘Possible’ (If You’re a Photon)
Sagittarius A* (or Sgr A*) is a region in the Milky Way’s core that generates powerful radio waves and astronomers have long suspected that it is the location of a black hole approximately 4 million times the mass of our sun. It wasn’t until astronomers were able to track stars orbiting close to the suspected black hole’s event horizon, however, that the supermassive black hole was confirmed to be there.
But supermassive black holes are a conundrum.
Now we know what signature our supermassive black hole generates, astronomers have discovered that the majority of other galaxies also possess supermassive black holes in their cores. Even when looking into the furthest cosmological distances at the youngest known galaxies, they also appear to host these black hole behemoths.
For a black hole to gain so much mass, it’s logical to think they need lots of time to pile on the mass — eating interstellar gas, stars and other galactic material. But to explain the earliest supermassive black holes in the youngest galaxies, there had to be some as-yet to be understood rapid growth mechanism.


ANALYSIS: Spooky Connection: Wormholes and the Quantum World
According to Li and Bambi, however, to explain our observations of Sgr A* and other galaxies’ cores, a primordial consequence of Einstein’s general theory of relativity may be called into play instead, thereby sidestepping the puzzle of how supermassive black holes grew so big so quickly.
“While of exotic nature, at least some kinds of primordial WHs (wormholes) can be viable candidates to explain the supermassive objects at the center of galaxies,” they write. “These objects have no solid surface, and therefore they may mimic the presence of an event horizon. They would have been produced in the early Universe and grown during inflation, so they could explain their presence even at very high redshift.”
High redshift galaxies are the youngest galaxies we can observe; where the galactic light has traveled billions of light-years, with frequencies shifted to the reddest part of the electromagnetic spectrum.
The type of wormhole that can mimic a black hole could only have been formed during the Big Bang, exerting a mass millions of times our sun’s mass, possibly explaining why the earliest galaxies appear to have supermassive black holes in their cores; they may not be black holes at all, they could in fact be gargantuan wormholes, linking disparate regions of space and time. (Though whether they can be traversed would likely remain a mystery.)


ANALYSIS: Stephen Hawking’s Time Machine
This may sound like some theoretical fun and games bordering on science fiction, but Li and Bambi have identified a powerful new instrument that could be used to differentiate emissions from space plasma surrounding the Sgr A* black hole or hypothetical wormhole.


GRAVITY will soon be installed at the ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) in the Atacama Desert in Chile and will be used to observe the galactic center with unprecedented precision. The researchers hope to analyze emission data from energized gases (or plasma) that could be found around the object inside Sgr A*. Should the object in fact be a wormhole, that plasma will generate a very different signature as the hypothetical wormhole will be physically smaller than a supermassive black hole.
By modeling a hot blob of plasma trapped in the warped spacetime surrounding a black hole and a wormhole, Li and Bambi noticed two very different emission signatures that both cases will generate. A wormhole would generate a “very narrow emission line,” whereas a black hole would have spectra that is “broad and skewed as a result of special and general relativistic effects,” they write.
It is rare that such exotic theories could be supported or disproved by an instrument that will be commissioned within a couple of years, but it will be very exciting to see whether the plasma emissions around the object in Sgr A* are more black hole-like or wormhole-like. And although the chances are slim, if the latter is detected, it could re-write our understanding of the Cosmos.
Source: arXiv via arXiv blog

 

Cosmic dust, Black Holes and inter etheric points


JPC: …In regards a suspected black hole, a point of “directing thought of the “Creative Forces” large amounts of cosmic dust [fire mist] are seen and is indicative of black hole theory as the secret doctrine expresses… “is but cosmic dust (a “laya centre”) SD1 67.

“The “fiery Wind” is the incandescent Cosmic dust which only follows magnetically, as the iron filings follow the magnet, the directing thought of the “Creative Forces.” Yet, this cosmic dust is something more; for every atom in the Universe has the potentiality of self-consciousness in it, and is, like the Monads of Leibnitz, a Universe in itself, and for itself. It is an atom and an angel.” SD1 107.

Dusty Surprise Around Giant Black Hole

 

ESO’s Very Large Telescope Interferometer has gathered the most detailed observations ever of the dust around the huge black hole at the centre of an active galaxy. Rather than finding all of the glowing dust in a doughnut-shaped torus around the black hole, as expected, the astronomers find that much of it is located above and below the torus. These observations show that dust is being pushed away from the black hole as a cool wind — a surprising finding that challenges current theories and tells us how supermassive black holes evolve and interact with their surroundings.

Over the last twenty years, astronomers have found that almost all galaxies have a huge black hole at their centre. Some of these black holes are growing by drawing in matter from their surroundings, creating in the process the most energetic objects in the Universe: active galactic nuclei (AGN). The central regions of these brilliant powerhouses are ringed by doughnuts of cosmic dust [1] dragged from the surrounding space, similar to how water forms a small whirlpool around the plughole of a sink. It was thought that most of the strong infrared radiation coming from AGN originated in these doughnuts.
But new observations of a nearby active galaxy called NGC 3783, harnessing the power of the Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI) at ESO’s Paranal Observatory in Chile [2], have given a team of astronomers a surprise. Although the hot dust — at some 700 to 1000 degrees Celsius — is indeed in a torus as expected, they found huge amounts of cooler dust above and below this main torus [3].
As Sebastian Hönig (University of California Santa Barbara, USA and Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel, Germany), lead author of the paper presenting the new results, explains, “This is the first time we’ve been able to combine detailed mid-infrared observations of the cool, room-temperature dust around an AGN with similarly detailed observations of the very hot dust. This also represents the largest set of infrared interferometry for an AGN published yet.”
The newly-discovered dust forms a cool wind streaming outwards from the black hole. This wind must play an important role in the complex relationship between the black hole and its environment. The black hole feeds its insatiable appetite from the surrounding material, but the intense radiation this produces also seems to be blowing the material away. It is still unclear how these two processes work together and allow supermassive black holes to grow and evolve within galaxies, but the presence of a dusty wind adds a new piece to this picture.
In order to investigate the central regions of NGC 3783, the astronomers needed to use the combined power of the Unit Telescopes of ESO’s Very Large Telescope. Using these units together forms an interferometer that can obtain a resolution equivalent to that of a 130-metre telescope.
Another team member, Gerd Weigelt (Max-Planck-Institut für Radioastronomie, Bonn, Germany), explains, “By combining the world-class sensitivity of the large mirrors of the VLT with interferometry we are able to collect enough light to observe faint objects. This lets us study a region as small as the distance from our Sun to its closest neighbouring star, in a galaxy tens of millions of light-years away. No other optical or infrared system in the world is currently capable of this.”
These new observations may lead to a paradigm shift in the understanding of AGN. They are direct evidence that dust is being pushed out by the intense radiation. Models of how the dust is distributed and how supermassive black holes grow and evolve must now take into account this newly-discovered effect.
Hönig concludes, “I am now really looking forward to MATISSE, which will allow us to combine all four VLT Unit Telescopes at once and observe simultaneously in the near- and mid-infrared — giving us much more detailed data.” MATISSE, a second generation instrument for the VLTI, is currently under construction.

Notes

[1] Cosmic dust consist of silicate and graphite grains — minerals also abundant on Earth. The soot from a candle is very similar to cosmic graphite dust, although the size of the grains in the soot are ten or more times bigger than typical grain sizes of cosmic graphite grains.
[2] The VLTI is formed from a combination of the four 8.2-metre VLT Unit Telescopes, or the four moveable 1.8-metre VLT Auxiliary Telescopes. It makes use of a technique known as interferometry, in which sophisticated instrumentation combines the light from several telescopes into one observation. Although it usually does not produce actual images, this technique dramatically increases the level of detail that can be measured in the resulting observations, comparable to what a space telescope with a diameter of over 100 metres would measure.
[3] The hotter dust was mapped using the AMBER VLTI instrument at near-infrared wavelengths and the newer observations reported here used the MIDI instrument at wavelengths between 8 and 13 microns in the mid-infrared.

 

 

 

Dwarf Galaxies Orbiting Around Their Larger Galaxies 

 

Astronomical science thinks all smaller or so called dwarf galaxies should ‘swarm’ or journey in all directions around their larger galaxies in either random or completely disordered fashion. It has now been faced with the probability that they orbit around their larger galactic types.


If the width of the orbital plane is in some comparison very thin this suggests an ordered orbit in the same fashion that planets orbit a star or some planets in the making orbit their parent planet. The same laws that apply to an atom, a planet, a causal body or solar system apply to the “galaxies of stars” also. JPC. 

“The standard model, also called the “lambda cold dark matter model,” says that satellite dwarf galaxies in the Milky Way and Andromeda are expected to behave a certain way: The galaxies would form in halos of dark matter, be widely distributed and would have to move in random directions, said Marcel Pawlowski, a postdoctoral researcher in the astronomy department at Case Western Reserve University and lead author of the new study.

“But what astronomers see is different,” Pawlowski said. “We see the satellite galaxies are in a huge disk and moving in the same direction within this disk, like the planets in our solar system moving in a thin plane in one direction around the sun. That’s unexpected and could be a real problem.”
Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2014-06-universe-dwarf-galaxies-dont-standard.html#jCp 

Rotation upon an axis and orbital spherical motion is a universal law. A smaller galactic logos will follow a path of orbital motion around a greater galactic logos. In the scientific view that this applies to 50% of galaxies then the remaining percentage must also follow some form of ordered path or course, even if not yet appreciated or understood, as in their course towards their polar opposites or some other undisclosed directive approached by astronomy science as colliding and  ‘tidal galaxies’. JPC. 

“Dark matter is thought to be an as-yet undetected matter that provides galaxies with enough mass to prevent the speed of their rotation from pulling them apart. If present, the unseen cloud of matter would be extremely unlikely to result in the planar structures seen.”
Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2014-06-universe-dwarf-galaxies-dont-standard.html#jCp 

Science tries to account for why rotating galaxies do not pull themselves apart. This is a key question for science and their formulation of the theory of dark energy adds the theoretical missing mass that gravitationally holds them and other stars together. The outer orbiting galaxies rotate at the same rate as the inner ones and this defies the laws of physics as understood by man. They should rotate slower but do not. They are of course held in formation by the united attractive and repulsive energy of the logi and as HPB said in complete ‘balance’. JPC.

Mysterious dance of dwarfs may force a cosmic rethink.

 

http://phys.org/news/2014-07-mysterious-dwarfs-cosmic-rethink.html#inlRlv

Jul 21, 2014 by Verity Leatherdale
Mysterious dance of dwarfs may force a cosmic rethink

This is an artist’s impression of the coherent orbit of dwarf galaxies about a large galaxy. Credit: Geraint Lewis

(Phys.org) —The discovery that many small galaxies throughout the universe do not ‘swarm’ around larger ones like bees do but ‘dance’ in orderly disc-shaped orbits is a challenge to our understanding of how the universe formed and evolved. 

The finding, by an international team of astronomers, including Professor Geraint Lewis from the University of Sydney’s School of Physics, is announced today in Nature.

“Early in 2013 we announced our startling discovery that half of the dwarf galaxies surrounding the Andromeda Galaxy are orbiting it in an immense plane” said Professor Lewis. “This plane is more than a million light years in diameter, but is very thin, with a width of only 300 000 light years.”
The universe contains billions of galaxies. Some, such as the Milky Way, are immense, containing hundreds of billions of stars. Most galaxies, however, are dwarfs, much smaller and with only a few billion stars.
For decades astronomers have used computer models to predict how these dwarf galaxies should orbit large galaxies. They had always found that they should be scattered randomly.
“Our Andromeda discovery did not agree with expectations, and we felt compelled to explore if it was true of other galaxies throughout the universe,” said Professor Lewis.
Using the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, a remarkable resource of colour images and 3-D maps covering more than a third of the sky, the researchers dissected the properties of thousands of nearby galaxies.
“We were surprised to find that a large proportion of pairs of satellite galaxies have oppositely directed velocities if they are situated on opposite sides of their giant galaxy hosts”, said lead author Neil Ibata of the Lycée International in Strasbourg, France.
“Everywhere we looked we saw this strangely coherent coordinated motion of dwarf galaxies. From this we can extrapolate that these circular planes of dancing dwarfs are universal, seen in about 50 percent of galaxies,” said Professor Geraint Lewis.
“This is a big problem that contradicts our standard cosmological models. It challenges our understanding of how the universe works including the nature of dark matter.”
The researchers believe the answer may be hidden in some currently unknown physical process that governs how gas flows in the universe, although, as yet, there is no obvious mechanism that can guide dwarf galaxies into narrow planes.
Some experts, however, have made more radical suggestions, including bending and twisting the laws of gravity and motion. “Throwing out seemingly established laws of physics is unpalatable,” said Professor Lewis, “but if our observations of nature are pointing us in this direction, we have to keep an open mind. That’s what science is all about.”

“1. Rotation on the axis: This is to be seen whether we are dealing with a minute atom of substance, with a planet revolving on its axis, with the rotation of the causal body, or with the rotation of a solar system. 
* In relation to the human being, this might be considered as the rotation of the various sheaths around the central consciousness during any one incarnation. 
* In relation to a Heavenly Man it might be considered as the rotation of a globe within a chain, or the period of one incarnation. 
* In relation to a solar Logos it might be considered as one complete revolution of the Sun in space, with all that is included within the ring-pass-not. 

2. Rotation around an orbit. This is the revolution of a sphere of life, not only on its axis, but along a spheroidal path or orbit around a central point. 
* In connection with man this might be considered as the revolution of the wheel of life, or the passage of an entity through the three lower planes down into incarnation and back again. 
* In connection with a Heavenly Man it might be considered as the cycle which we call a round in which the life of the Heavenly Man cycles through all the seven globes. 
* In connection with the solar Logos it is the complete revolution of the solar system around its cosmic center.” TCF 277.

 

 

 

 

Seven Dwarf Galaxies orbiting around the M101 spiral galaxy



“Now extend this idea to a greater phenomenal entity, the solar system. This entity is itself an integral part of a still greater life which is expressing itself through seven solar systems, of which ours is one. If you can grasp this idea, a vague picture of a great underlying esoteric truth will emerge into your consciousness.” EA 8.JPC: A great and underlying truth sub-standing the sevenfold division and multiplicity of our solar system and universe exists. Let us ponder the role that galaxies play in the hierarchical universe and its sevenfold multiplicity. Seven so called dwarf galaxies have recently emerged into the astronomical consciousness within the M101 spiral galaxy. This greater galaxy, that contains perhaps innumerable lesser galaxies, is located within the Ursa Major “galaxies of stars” to use the Tibetans words. 

These stars and galaxies constitute that great constellation/asterism we know as “leading stars” and the Great Rishies. Spiral galaxy M101 is found North East of Ursa major and the seven lesser galaxies are thought to orbit it, or repose as lesser galaxies within the greater influence of M101 and therefore as a group of “galaxies of stars” found in the Great Bear.

In turn DK tells us that we are one of the solar systems that make up a minor 1/7 part of the seven solar systems of energy expression of the OAWNMBS. It is hypothesised that dark matter is scientifically accounting for the missing mass that drives and influences the visible systems of galaxiesand stars and is here accounted for in yet numberless undiscovered galaxies slowly revealing themselves to astronomical science and perhaps more importantly to the vast numbers out of incarnation as “there may lie back of everything visible a vast realm or realms of Existences”  who arecosmic entities, in rank equal to the ONE ABOUT WHOM NAUGHT MAY BE SAID, Who are in a similar sense discarnate, and found in realms subtler than that of the manifestation of light.We should note the Tibetans words “there may lie back of everything visible” because it has importance in regard to black hole theory that scientifically aims to discover that with lies beyond the visible world of space time. DK discusses great existences residing beyond the “manifestation of light”… “Light, physical plane light, has a close connection with, and uses, as a medium, the second ether.” Therefore DK is speaking of the second ether through or via which light manifest into the visible universe, and of the sub plane via which it moves beyond and so disappears into subtle realms via for instance a black hole or laya cantre.  

This subtler realm I have discussed elsewhere in papers on black holes, Laya centres and gravitation. In subtler realms from super gaseous fourth ether to the monadic realms of these great cosmic existences these entities exert influence, attraction and therefore certain gravitational force upon the objective universe. Certainly planets yet in the etheric stage of expression and without a dense physical vehicle can and do exert influence and gravitational pull [as well as conscious influence] on the visible system even if they are as yet unrecognised. This accounts as ‘missing mass’ or in truth as unaccounted for attraction due to the logos informing the etheric planet.
Returning to the great Rishies those leading stars of Ursa Major it is noted that the three major aspects are hypothetically aligned and lead 123, in the handle of the big dipper or great bear. These lead stars would then beAlkaid/ Benetnash ray one, Mizar [second star] ray two and forming a constellation with our solar system, and Alioth as ray three and forming the logical and sequential major “leading stars” of the three major ray aspects of the Great Rishies of Ursa Major. 

Our solar system forms then one of the seven constellations out of the seven constellations of the seven leading stars of the Great Bear. I posit that our solar system is in constellation with Mizar and both these stars are of the second major ray. They form a constellation of stars of “two or more stars”. The leading stars of Ursa Major being then seven constellations of which ours form one, is then according to DK a “cosmic wheel”. In turn, a constellation of seven galaxies might be theoretically seen as a galactic wheel, by analogy. However, we are mindful that DK does specify and catalogue the great groups by which constellations and ‘wheels’ are classified. 
Notably as “millions of septenary constellations”. “3.  “The first ‘seven stars’ are not planetary. They are the leading stars of seven constellations which turn [656] around with the Great Bear” (S.D. Vol. III, 195) EA appendix.”A cosmic wheel, or a group of seven constellations. These are grouped according to:
* Their magnitude,
* Their vibration,
* Their color,
* Their influence upon each other.These cosmic wheels, according to the esoteric books, are divided into forty-nine groups, each comprising millions of septenary constellations.” TCF 1089.”Further, it must be added that the third type of motion to which our system is subjected, that of progress onward, is the result of the united activity of the seven constellations (our solar system forming one of the seven) which form the seven centers of the cosmic Logos.” TCF 1059.


“seven solar systems (of which ours is but one)”. IHS 160.
“three synthetic Builders or Creators, Who are:

1.  The Life which expresses Itself through seven solar systems.
The One About Whom Naught May Be Said.
2.  The Life which expresses Itself through seven planets.
The Solar Deity – God.
3.  The Life which expresses Itself through seven planetary centers, or continents.
The Planetary Logos – The Ancient of Days.” EP1 155.

“This “control of form through a septenate of energies” (as it is defined in the Old Commentary) is an unalterable rule in the inner government of our universe and of our particular solar system, as well as in the case of individual man. There are, for instance, in our solar system, seven sacred planets which correspond to the seven individual force centers in man, the seven solar systems, of which our solar system is one, and in their turn the seven energy centers of the One to Whom I have referred in my other books as the One About Whom Naught Can Be Said.” EA 12.

“The cosmic Logos of our system works similarly through three major systems (of which ours is not one), utilizing seven solar systems (of which ours is one), for the distribution of His force and having myriads of sevenfold groups as the cells of His body.” TCF 353.

“the ONE ABOUT WHOM NAUGHT MAY BE SAID, Who ensouls the seven solar systems”. TCF 44.

“Therefore, we can do no more than accept the fact of the inconceivable magnitude of that EXISTENCE which is manifesting through seven solar systems, and the extension of this concept of Being to embrace the entire vault of the Heavens. It is interesting to bear in mind in this connection that all that is seen, being objective forms or Beings in manifestation through certain spheres of light, may not be all that IS, but that there may lie back of everything visible a vast realm or realms of Existences. The very brain of man reels in contemplation of such a concept. Yet just as there are tens of millions of human beings out of objective manifestation, or discarnate, on the subtler planes of the solar system, so there may be cosmic entities, in rank equal to the ONE ABOUT WHOM NAUGHT MAY BE SAID, Who are in a similar sense discarnate, and found in realms subtler than that of the manifestation of light.” TCF 412.

Posted: Jul 11, 2014
Astronomers find 7 dwarf galaxies with new telescope
(Nanowerk News) Meet the seven new dwarf galaxies.

Yale University astronomers, using a new type of telescope made by stitching together telephoto lenses, recently discovered seven celestial surprises while probing a nearby spiral galaxy. The previously unseen galaxies may yield important insights into dark matter and galaxy evolution, while possibly signaling the discovery of a new class of objects in space.
For now, scientists know they have found a septuplet of new galaxies that were previously overlooked because of their diffuse nature: The ghostly galaxies emerged from the night sky as the team obtained the first observations from the “homemade” telescope.
The discovery came quickly, in a relatively small section of sky. “We got an exciting result in our first images,” said Allison Merritt, a Yale graduate student and lead author of a paper about the discovery in the Astrophysical Journal Letters. “It was very exciting. It speaks to the quality of the telescope.”

Seven New Dwarf Galaxies
This image shows the field of view from the Dragonfly Telephoto Array, centered on M101. Inset images highlight the seven new galaxies. (Image: Yale University)
Pieter van Dokkum, chair of Yale’s astronomy department, designed the robotic telescope with University of Toronto astronomer Roberto Abraham. Their Dragonfly Telephoto Array uses eight telephoto lenses with special coatings that suppress internally scattered light. This makes the telescope uniquely adept at detecting the very diffuse, low surface brightness of the newly discovered galaxies.
“These are the same kind of lenses that are used in sporting events like the World Cup. We decided to point them upward instead,” van Dokkum said. He and Abraham built the compact, oven-sized telescope in 2012 at New Mexico Skies, an observatory in Mayhill, N.M. The telescope was named Dragonfly because the lenses resemble the compound eye of an insect.
“We knew there was a whole set of science questions that could be answered if we could see diffuse objects in the sky,” van Dokkum said. In addition to discovering new galaxies, the team is looking for debris from long-ago galaxy collisions.
“It’s a new domain. We’re exploring a region of parameter space that had not been explored before,” van Dokkum said.
The Yale scientists will tackle a key question next: Are these seven newly found objects dwarf galaxies orbiting around the M101 spiral galaxy, or are they located much closer or farther away, and just by chance are visible in the same direction as M101?
If it’s the latter, Merritt said, these objects represent something entirely different. “There are predictions from galaxy formation theory about the need for a population of very diffuse, isolated galaxies in the universe,” Merritt said. “It may be that these seven galaxies are the tip of the iceberg, and there are thousands of them in the sky that we haven’t detected yet.”
Merritt stressed that until they collect more data and determine the distances to the objects, researchers won’t know their true nature. But the possibilities are intriguing enough that the team has been granted the opportunity to use the Hubble Space Telescope for further study.
“I’m confident that some of them will turn out to be a new class of objects,” van Dokkum said. “I’d be surprised if all seven of them are satellites of M101.”
Meanwhile, there is also more work to be done with the new telescope. “We are collecting new data with the Dragonfly telescope every clear night. We’re all curious to see what other surprises the night sky has in store for us,” Merritt said.
Source: Yale University

“1.  The seven stars of the Great Bear or Ursa Major are involved in an intricate relation with Ursa Minor and the Pleiades. With this we shall not deal. This major triplicity of constellations has a peculiar relation to that Great Being to Whom I have at times referred as the One About Whom Naught Can Be Said. All that can be hinted at is that these three galaxies of stars are the three aspects of that Indescribable, Absolute Monad, the Ineffable Cause of the seven solar systems – of which ours is one.” EA 608.


Several bright galaxies are found in Ursa Major, including the pair Messier 81 (one of the brightest galaxies in the sky) and Messier 82 above the bear’s head, and Pinwheel Galaxy (M101), a spiral northeast of η Ursae Majoris. The spiral galaxies Messier 108 and Messier 109 are also found in this constellation. wikipedia.

 

 

 

The Milky Way

 

 

Milky Way Stellar motions in outer halo shed new light on Milky Way evolution The stars’ unusual lateral motion is circumstantial evidence that they may be the remnants of a shredded galaxy that the Milky Way gravitationally ripped apart billions of years ago. By STScl, Baltimore, Maryland | Published: Friday, February 22, 2013

 

Milky-Way-disk
This illustration shows the disk of our Milky Way Galaxy surrounded by a fain, extended halo of old stars. Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope to observe the nearby Andromeda Galaxy serendipitously identified a dozen foreground stars in the Milky Way halo. They measured the first sideways motions (represented by the arrows) for such distant halo stars. The motions indicate the possible presence of a shell in the halo, which may have formed from the accretion of a dwarf galaxy. This observation supports the view that the Milky Way has undergone continuing growth and evolution over its lifetime by consuming smaller galaxies. // NASA/ESA/and A. Feild (STScI)
Peering deep into the vast stellar halo that envelops our Milky Way Galaxy, astronomers using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope have uncovered tantalizing evidence for the possible existence of a shell of stars that are a relic of cannibalism by the Milky Way.
Researchers used Hubble to precisely measure, for the first time ever, the sideways motions of a small sample of stars located far from the galaxy’s center. Their unusual lateral motion is circumstantial evidence that the stars may be the remnants of a shredded galaxy that the Milky Way gravitationally ripped apart billions of years ago. These stars support the idea that the Milky Way grew, in part, through the accretion of smaller galaxies.
“Hubble’s unique capabilities are allowing astronomers to uncover clues to the galaxy’s remote past. The more distant regions of the galaxy have evolved more slowly than the inner sections. Objects in the outer regions still bear the signatures of events that happened long ago,” said Roeland van der Marel of the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, Maryland.
The stars also offer a new opportunity for measuring the “hidden” mass of our galaxy, which is in the form of dark matter — an invisible form of matter that does not emit or reflect radiation. In a universe full of 100 billion galaxies, our Milky Way “home” offers the closest and, therefore, best site for detailed study of the history and architecture of a galaxy.
A team of astronomers led by Alis Deason of the University of California, Santa Cruz, and van der Marel identified 13 stars located roughly 80,000 light-years from the galaxy’s center. They lie in an outer halo of ancient stars that date back to the formation of our galaxy. The team was surprised to find that the stars showed more of a sideways, or tangential, amount of motion than they expected. This movement is different from what astronomers know about the halo stars near the Sun, which move predominantly in radial orbits. Stars in these orbits plunge toward the galactic center and travel back out again. The stars’ tangential motion can be explained if there is an over-density of stars at 80,000 light-years — like cars backing up on an expressway. This traffic jam would form a shell-like feature, like ones seen around other galaxies.
Deason and her team plucked the outer halo stars out of seven years’ worth of archival Hubble telescope observations of our neighboring Andromeda Galaxy (M31). In those observations, Hubble peered through the Milky Way’s halo to study the more distant galaxy’s stars, which are more than 20 times farther away. The Milky Way’s halo stars were in the foreground and considered as clutter for the study of M31. But to Deason’s study, they were pure gold. The observations offered a unique opportunity to look at the motion of Milky Way halo stars.
Finding the stars was meticulous work. Each Hubble image contained more than 100,000 stars. “We had to somehow find those few stars that actually belonged to the Milky Way halo,” van der Marel said. “It was like finding needles in a haystack.”
The astronomers identified the stars based on their colors, brightnesses, and sideways motions. The halo stars appear to move faster than M31’s stars because they are so much closer. Team member Sangmo Tony Sohn of STScI identified the halo stars and measured both the amount and direction of their slight sideways motion. The stars move on the sky only about one milliarcsecond a year, which would be like watching a golf ball on the Moon moving one foot per month. Nonetheless, this was measured with 5 percent precision.
“Measurements of this accuracy are enabled by a combination of Hubble’s sharp view, the many years’ worth of observations, and the telescope’s stability,” said van der Marel. “Hubble is located in the space environment, and it’s free of gravity, wind, atmosphere, and seismic perturbations.”
Stars in the inner halo have highly radial orbits. When the team compared the tangential motion of the outer halo stars with their radial motion, they were very surprised to find that the two were equal. Computer simulations of galaxy formation normally show an increasing tendency towards radial motion if one moves further out in the halo. These observations imply the opposite trend. The existence of a shell structure in the Milky Way halo is one plausible explanation of the researchers’ findings. Such a shell can form by accretion of a satellite galaxy. This is consistent with a picture in which the Milky Way has undergone continuing evolution over its lifetime due to the accretion of satellite galaxies.
The team compared their results with data of halo stars recorded in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. Those observations uncovered a higher density of stars at about the same distance as the 13 outer halo stars in their Hubble study. A similar excess of halo stars exists across the constellations Triangulum and Andromeda. Beyond that radius, the number of stars plummets.
Deason immediately thought the two results were more than just coincidence. “What may be happening is that the stars are moving quite slowly because they are at the apocenter, the farthest point in their orbit about the hub of our Milky Way,” Deason said. “The slowdown creates a pileup of stars as they loop around in their path and travel back towards the galaxy. So the in-and-out or radial motion decreases compared with their sideways or tangential motion.”
Shells of stars have been seen in the halos of some galaxies, and astronomers predicted that the Milky Way may contain them, too. But until now, there was limited evidence for their existence. The halo stars in our galaxy are hard to see because they are dim and spread across the sky.
Encouraged by this study, the team hopes to search for more distant halo stars in the Hubble archive. “These unexpected results fuel our interest in looking for more stars to confirm that this is really happening,” Deason said. “At the moment, we have quite a small sample. So we really can make it a lot more robust with getting more fields with Hubble.” The Andromeda observations only cover a small “keyhole view” of the sky.
The team’s goal is to put together a clearer picture of how the Milky Way formed. By knowing the orbits and motions of many halo stars, it will also be possible to calculate an accurate mass for the galaxy. “Until now, what we have been missing is the stars’ tangential motion, which is a key component,” Deason said. “The tangential motion will allow us to better measure the total mass distribution of the galaxy, which is dominated by dark matter. By studying the mass distribution, we can see whether it follows the same distribution as predicted in theories of structure formation.”

 

 

 

Andromeda and the Milky Way

 

 

Well just a note about the revised estimate in size of the Milky Way. Seems Andromeda and Milky Way are much closer matched in size, rotation speed and star numbers. Perhaps the marriage is more evenly suited after all. Jeremy.

Recent measurements by the Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) have revealed that the Milky Way is much heavier than some previously thought. The mass of our home galaxy is now considered to be roughly similar to that of our largest local neighbour, the Andromeda Galaxy. By using the VLBA to measure the apparent shift of far-flung star-forming regions when the Earth is on opposite sides of the Sun, the researchers were able to measure the distance to those regions using fewer assumptions than prior efforts. The newer and more accurate estimate of the galaxy’s rotational speed (and in turn the amount of dark matter contained by the galaxy) puts the figure at about 254 km/s, significantly higher than the widely accepted value of 220 km/s.[16] This in turn implies that the Milky Way has a total mass equivalent to around 3 trillion Suns, about 50% more massive than some previously thought. Wikipedia.

http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/39709/title/This_just_in_Milky_Way_as_massive_as_3_trillion_suns

 

 

 

Dilation of the seven rays/gamma ray pulses‏

 

 

“The seven rays of the sun will expand at the final pralaya into seven suns and absorb the material of the whole universe.” (S.D. Vol. II, 647)

Cosmic Pralaya is for things visible, not for the Arupa, formless, world. The Cosmic or Universal Pralaya comes only at the end of one hundred years of Brahma; when the Universal dissolution is said to take place. Then the Avyaya, say the exoteric scriptures, the eternal life symbolized by Vishnu, assuming the character of Rudra, the Destroyer, enters into the Seven Rays of the Sun and drinks up all the waters of the Universe. “Thus fed, the seven solar Rays dilate to seven Suns and set fire to the whole Cosmos. . . . .” SD2 69.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamma-ray_burst

600px-Gamma_ray_burst

 

JPC: At present, the shorter or higher degree of the radioactive spectrum identified by astronomers is that of the gamma ray frequency. This high frequency burst is the destructive explosion of the physical sun as a result of the dilation into ‘seven suns’ “Temporarily, and just prior to destruction” of the physical sun or star… “associated with supernova explosions — powerful detonations at the ends of the lives of massive stars”.

Noted is the fact of the ‘temporary prior to destruction’ period of the rapidly rotating star, amounting to a momentary period of a ‘couple of seconds’ up to a couple of days or so and the period of the scientifically recognised c1967 gamma ray explosion of electromagnetic radiation. This is followed by a longer afterglow effect at longer wavelengths of X-ray, ultraviolet, optical, infra red, microwave and radio recognised c1995. The black hole ‘jets’ are the detected gamma ray ejections. The is parallel to the exterior/interior dilation of the seven rays.

Exoteric and esoteric science is in agreement on the very short period of time at the end of the life of a physical sun, with occult science explaining the temporary and short period prior to the actual physical destruction as planal life absorption via the seven suns.

The star upon collapsing and end of nuclear fusion, the matter is withdrawn into the force center/zero point or black hole due to the ultra powerful gravitational attraction of the singularity known as the point of highest denseness or compression of all matter into the black hole. The term singulartiy is scientifically indicitive of the occult term the ‘zero point’ or ‘laya centre’.

In the case of the neutron stars or posts explosion and ultra dense/gravitational high revolution tiny star it is here theorised that the the residual material of this star type is unabsorbed material in pralaya analogous to a planet in pralaya though still at a distant time may be fully absorbed into a zero point or black hole. The ‘exotic’ atomic and sub atomic particles, quark, quantum and ‘strange’ matter, including all the atomic matter of the solar system and scheme, have “individualised” according to the Tibetan DK.

ALMA probes environment around dark gamma-ray bursts

The observations support the hypothesis that dust absorbs the explosion’s afterglow radiation, causing the dark gamma-ray bursts.
By ESO, Garching, Germany  |  Published: Wednesday, June 11, 2014
RELATED TOPICS: SPACE PHYSICS | GAMMA-RAY BURSTS
Artist’s impression of a gamma-ray burst buried in dust.
GRB

Observations from the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) have for the first time directly mapped out the molecular gas and dust in the host galaxies of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) — the biggest explosions in the universe. In a complete surprise, less gas was observed than expected, and correspondingly, much more dust, making some GRBs appear as “dark GRBs.” It shows ALMA’s potential to help us better understand these objects.

GRBs are intense bursts of extremely high energy observed in distant galaxies. Bursts that last more than a couple seconds are known as long-duration gamma-ray bursts (LGRBs) and are associated with supernova explosions — powerful detonations at the ends of the lives of massive stars.

In just a matter of seconds, a typical burst releases as much energy as the Sun will in its entire 10-billion-year lifetime. The explosion itself is often followed by a slowly fading emission, known as an afterglow, which is thought to be created by collisions between the ejected material and the surrounding gas.

However, some gamma-ray bursts mysteriously seem to have no afterglow — they are referred to as dark bursts. One possible explanation is that clouds of dust absorb the afterglow radiation.

In recent years, scientists have been working to better understand how GRBs form by probing their host galaxies. Astronomers expected that the massive stars that were GRB progenitors would be found in active star-forming regions in these galaxies, which would be surrounded by a large amount of molecular gas — the fuel for star formation. However, there had been no observational results to back up this theory, leaving a long-standing mystery.

For the first time, a Japanese team of astronomers, led by Bunyo Hatsukade from the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, has used ALMA to detect the radio emission from molecular gas in two dark LGRB hosts — GRB 020819B and GRB 051022 — at about 4.3 billion and 6.9 billion light-years, respectively. Although such radio emission had never been detected in the GRB host galaxies, ALMA made it possible with its unprecedentedly high sensitivity.

“We have been searching for molecular gas in GRB host galaxies for over 10 years using various telescopes around the world,” said Kotaro Kohno from the University of Tokyo. “As a result of our hard work, we finally achieved a remarkable breakthrough using the power of ALMA. We are very excited with what we have achieved.”

Another remarkable achievement made possible by the high resolution of ALMA was uncovering the distribution of molecular gas and dust in GRB host galaxies. Observations of GRB 020819B revealed a remarkably dust-rich environment in the outskirts of the host galaxy, whereas molecular gas was found only around its center. This is the first time that such a distribution among GRB host galaxies has been revealed.

“We didn’t expect that GRBs would occur in such a dusty environment with a low ratio of molecular gas to dust. This indicates that the GRB occurred in an environment quite different from a typical star-forming region,” said Hatsukade. This suggests that massive stars that die as GRBs change the environment in their star-forming region before they explode.

The research team believes that a possible explanation for the high proportion of dust compared to molecular gas at the GRB site is the difference in their reactions to ultraviolet radiation. Because the bonds between atoms that make up molecules are easily broken by ultraviolet radiation, molecular gas cannot survive in an environment exposed to the strong ultraviolet radiation produced by the hot massive stars in its star-forming region, including the one that would eventually explode as the observed GRB. Although a similar distribution is also seen in GRB 051022, this has yet to be confirmed due to the lack of resolution as the GRB 051022 host is located farther away than the GRB 020819B host. In any case, these ALMA observations support the hypothesis that it is dust that absorbs the afterglow radiation, causing the dark gamma- ray bursts.

“The results obtained this time were beyond our expectations. We need to carry out further observations with other GRB hosts to see if this could be general environmental conditions of a GRB site. We are looking forward to future research with the improved capability of ALMA,” said Hatsukade.

A Treatise on Cosmic Fire – Section Two – Division D – Thought Elementals and Fire Elementals  

(5) The Great Pralaya

This interval comes at the close of every one hundred years of Brahma, and sweeps into dissolution forms of every kind – subtle and dense – throughout the entire system. It is a period analogous to that dealt with when we considered the abstraction of man from his etheric vehicle, and his ability then to function on the astral plane, dissociated from his dual physical form. Within the system a process similar to that undergone when man withdraws the etheric body out of the dense physical vehicle, will be seen towards the close of the mahamanvantara. It will cover the period wherein the lesser four Rays merge and blend, seeking duality, and their polar opposites. Eventually the four become two, the two become one, and all are then synthesized into the third major Ray. The time is not yet, but lies countless aeons ahead. It is the first appearance of the destroyer aspect in connection with the planetary schemes, and marks the beginning of the [741] time when the “Heavens will melt with fervent heat,” and the Sun becomes seven suns. (See S. D., II, 746, 747.)

The microcosmic correspondence can be seen in the following process. The physical permanent atom absorbs the entire life force of the physical body, and its inherent heat and light is thereby increased until at the fourth initiation the seven spirillae are fully vitalized, and vibrant. The internal heat of the atom, plus the external heat of the egoic body wherein it has its place, produces then that which destroys the permanent atom. Temporarily, and just prior to destruction, it becomes a tiny sevenfold sun owing to the radiation and activity of the spirillae. So with the physical sun of the system; it will in a similar manner become seven suns, when it has absorbed the life essence of the fully evolved planes, and of the planetary schemes thereon. The ensuing conflagration is the final work of the Destroyer aspect. It marks the moment of the highest development of deva substance in the system, the consummation of the work of Agni and his fire angels, and the initiation of Brahma. Atomic substance will then individualize (which, as we know, is the goal for the atom) and after the great pralaya the next solar system will start with the threefold Spirit manifesting through substance which is essentially distinguished by active intelligent love. This is necessarily incomprehensible to our fourth round minds.

 

Chandra

 

X-ray points of light X100

Chandra captures galaxy sparkling in X-rays

 

A decade of Whirlpool Galaxy observations provide critical information about how X-ray sources containing black holes behave over time.
By Chandra X-ray Observatory, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Alabama  |  Published: Thursday, June 05, 2014
RELATED TOPICS: GALAXIES | SPIRAL GALAXIES | STAR FORMATION | NEUTRON STARS
WhirlpoolGalaxy
A new Chandra image of M51 contains nearly a million seconds of observing time. The data reveal hundreds of point-like X-ray sources within what is nicknamed the “Whirlpool Galaxy.” Most of these point sources are X-ray binary systems with either a neutron star or black hole orbiting a Sun-like star. The composite image consists of X-rays from Chandra (purple) and optical data from Hubble (red, green, and blue).
X-ray: NASA/CXC/Wesleyan Univ./R.Kilgard, et al; Optical: NASA/STScI
Nearly a million seconds of observing time with NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory has revealed a spiral galaxy similar to the Milky Way, glittering with hundreds of X-ray points of light.
 
The galaxy is officially named Messier 51 (M51) or NGC 5194 but often goes by its nickname of the “Whirlpool Galaxy.” Like the Milky Way, the Whirlpool is a spiral galaxy with spectacular arms of stars and dust. M51 is located 30 million light-years from Earth, and its face-on orientation to Earth gives us a perspective that we can never get of our own spiral galactic home.
 
By using Chandra, astronomers can peer into the Whirlpool to uncover things that can only be detected in X-rays. In this new composite image, Chandra data are shown in purple. Optical data from the Hubble Space Telescope are red, green, and blue.
 
Most of the X-ray sources are X-ray binaries (XRBs). These systems consist of pairs of objects where a compact star, either a neutron star or, more rarely, a black hole, is capturing material from an orbiting companion star. The infalling material is accelerated by the intense gravitational field of the compact star and heated to millions of degrees, producing a luminous X-ray source. The Chandra observations reveal that at least 10 of the XRBs in M51 are bright enough to contain black holes. In eight of these systems, the black holes are likely capturing material from companion stars that are much more massive than the Sun.
 
Because astronomers have been observing M51 for about a decade with Chandra, they have critical information about how X-ray sources containing black holes behave over time. The black holes with massive stellar companions are consistently bright over the 10 years of Chandra observations. These results suggest that the high-mass stars in these X-ray sources also have strong winds that allow for a steady stream of material to flow onto the black hole.
 
A difference between the Milky Way and the Whirlpool Galaxy is that M51 is in the midst of merging with a smaller companion galaxy seen in the upper left of the image. Scientists think this galactic interaction is triggering waves of star formation. The most massive of the newly formed stars will race through their evolution in a few million years and collapse to form neutron stars or black holes. Most of the XRBs containing black holes in M51 are located close to regions where stars are forming, showing their connection to the oncoming galactic collision.
 
Previous studies of the Whirlpool Galaxy with Chandra revealed just over 100 X-ray sources. The new data set, equivalent to about 900,000 seconds of Chandra observing time, reveals nearly 500 X-ray sources. About 400 of these sources are thought to be within M51, with the remaining either being in front of or behind the galaxy itself.
 
Much of the diffuse, or fuzzy, X-ray emission in M51 comes from gas that has been superheated by supernova explosions of massive stars.

 

http://www.astronomy.com/news/2014/06/chandra-captures-galaxy-sparkling-in-x-rays

 

 

The Big Bang

 

380,000 years after the Big Bang and light

 

STANZA III. — Continued.


12. THEN SVABHAVAT SENDS FOHAT TO HARDEN THE ATOMS. EACH (of these) IS A PART OF THE WEB (Universe). REFLECTING THE “SELF-EXISTENT LORD” (Primeval Light) LIKE A MIRROR, EACH BECOMES IN TURN A WORLD…


”Fohat hardens the atoms”; i.e., by infusing energy into them: he scatters the atoms or primordial matter. “He scatters himself while scattering matter into atoms” (MSS. Commentaries.) SD1 85.


”Fohat hardens and scatters the seven brothers” (Book III. Dzyan); which means that the primordial Electric Entity — for the Eastern Occultists insist that Electricity is an Entity — electrifies into life, and separates primordial stuff or pregenetic matter into atoms, themselves the source of all life and consciousness. “There exists an universal agent unique of all forms and of life, that is called Od,** Ob, and Aour, active and passive, positive and negative, like day and night: it is the first light in Creation” SD1 76.


Using our imagination and intuition it does not perhaps stretch the boundaries to far for us to ponder on these passages from the SD. Here we are told again that each atom so hardened or densified i.e. materialised in time and space will in turn become a world or planet for every atom will become a man and man a planet as far as the consciousnesses cohering the physical vehicle is concerned. Each atom or planet so hardened is Reflecting the “SELF-EXISTENT LORD” like a Mirror. An analogy between a black hole radiating or reflecting itself in matter as light hardened is worth a thought. The actual black hole or laya center appears black to human exoteric investigation though is light esoterically seen. This is told by HPB and AAB. Even current cosmology now holds that the first thing appearing at the big bang or beginning of the universe was Light. JPC. 9 December 2013.


This is the first appearance from the darkness only 380,000 years [approx] after the creation or big bang. Plasma is both positive and negative, active and passive and therefore neutral though able to electrify into life all atoms “by infusing energy into them”. The Secret Doctrine of HPB and DK explains occultly the scientific understanding of creation. Fohat is closely connected with plasma, the fourth state of matter scientifically understood. Occultly at the same level it is the fourth ether and ‘pre gaseous’ and described in TCF as ‘matter’. Exoterically it is also pre gaseous.  The correspondence is here noted. JPC. 

A Treatise on Cosmic Fire – Stanzas of Dzyan     



Stanza XI


The wheel of life turns within the wheel of outer form.

The matter of Fohat circulateth, and its fire hardeneth all the forms. TCF 32.
Genesis And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. 5
active and passive, positive and negative, like day and night: it is the first light in Creation” SD1 76.
Plasma is loosely described as an electrically neutral medium of positive and negative particles (i.e. the overall charge of a plasma is roughly zero)
Plasma (from Greek πλάσμα, “anything formed”[1]) is one of the four fundamental states of matter (the others being solid, liquid, and gas). When air or gas is ionized, plasma forms with similar conductive properties to that of metals. Plasma is the most abundant form of matter in the Universe, because most stars are in a plasma state.[2][3]
Plasma comprises the major state of matter of the Sun. Heating a gas may ionize its molecules or atoms (reducing or increasing the number of electrons in them), thus turning it into a plasma, which contains charged particles: positive ions and negative electrons or ions.[4] Ionization can be induced by other means, such as strong electromagnetic field applied with a laser or microwave generator, and is accompanied by the dissociation of molecular bonds, if present.[5] Plasma can also be created by the application of an electric field on a gas, where the underlying process is the Townsend avalanche.
The presence of a non-negligible number of charge carriers makes the plasma electrically conductive so that it responds strongly to electromagnetic fields. Plasma, therefore, has properties quite unlike those of solids, liquids, or gases and is considered a distinct state of matter. Like gas, plasma does not have a definite shape or a definite volume unless enclosed in a container; unlike gas, under the influence of a magnetic field, it may form structures such as filaments, beams and double layers. Some common plasmas are found in stars and neon signs. In the universe, plasma is the most common state of matter for ordinary matter, most of which is in the rarefied intergalactic plasma (particularly intracluster medium) and in stars. Much of the understanding of plasmas has come from the pursuit of controlled nuclear fusion and fusion power, for which plasma physics provides the scientific basis. wikipedia.
 
June 9, 2014
Cosmologists now agree that the universe as we know it began with an ultra-hot explosion about 13.8 billion years ago, and that the searing heat of the primeval explosion left a relic in the universe today in the form of a pervasive afterglow known as the Cosmic Microwave Background or CMB. For about 380,000 years after the Big Bang the universe was so hot that the cosmological material – mainly hydrogen and helium gas – was ionised and opaque. But when the temperature cooled to a few thousand degrees, the material de-ionised and became transparent, allowing the light from the glowing gases to travel largely unimpeded to form the CMB we observe today. It provides an extraordinary snapshot of what the universe was like before the formation of galaxies or the first stars lit up. By mining the CMB for ever more subtle data, cosmologists have been able to reconstruct a detailed history as far back as the first split second.
…It’s like that with our universe. That too has a type of horizon because light can have travelled only a finite distance since the Big Bang. As a result, astronomers on Earth can see regions of the distant universe that themselves are too far apart to see each other – were there anyone out there looking. Because no physical influence can travel faster than light, these cosmic patches cannot have interacted in any way, yet they look very much the same. In particular, the CMB is the same.
…In a remarkably prescient paper published in 1968, a young Cambridge astronomer, Martin Rees, realised that if the then newly discovered CMB possessed small temperature variations, then the radiation should also be partly polarised.  To understand what polarised light waves entail, think first of a wave travelling along a rope. The wave can wiggle in any direction – left to right, up and down or any angle in between. Light, which is a form of electromagnetic radiation, does the same, and the direction that the electric field varies in is called the angle of polarisation (see diagram above). Light from a glowing gas contains waves of all possible polarisation angles jumbled up. However, if light scatters or reflects off something , for example, when sunlight reflects off a puddle in the road, it acquires a preferred polarisation in the horizontal plane. (This is the very worst for glare. Polarised sunglasses filter out the horizontally polarised light, allowing only vertically polarised light through.)  
…Rees, now Britain’s Astronomer Royal, reasoned that polarising processes must have happened in the early universe. As the universe cooled and became transparent, light from the glowing primordial gases would have scattered from residual free electrons. Because the intensity of the glow possessed those slight but crucial variations, this polarisation would not average out, but be retained as an imprint in the CMB. The polarisation produced when the light from the bright patches scatters off the electrons dominates over different polarisations coming from other angles.
It took several decades, but in 2002 another South Pole experiment called DASI (for Degree Angular Scale Interferometer), detected the first signs of polarisation in the CMB.
It was this discovery – that events in the early universe can still be read through polarisation in the CMB – that opened the way, as I shall explain, for the detection of gravitational waves.
…The heat map from the European Space Agency’s satellite Planck, shows slight temperature variations across the sky, in effect a snapshot of the universe frozen in time at about 380,000 years after the Big Bang. A light wave travelling along the x axis will create oscillating electric (red) and magnetic (blue) fields in the perpendicular y and z axes. The light is “polarised in the y direction” in the example above. Credit: ESA/the Planck Collaboration/SPL
…In 1916 Einstein published his then new masterpiece, the general theory of relativity, replacing Newton’s 17th  century explanation of gravity as a force that reaches across space between any masses – for example, the Sun and the Earth. A characteristic feature of Newton’s theory is that the gravitational force acts instantaneously. Thus, according to Newton, if the Sun were to cease existence at noon tomorrow, the Earth’s orbit would change immediately because of the disappearance of the Sun’s gravitational pull. However, we would not see it blink out until shortly after 12:08pm on account of the fact that light takes more than eight minutes to reach Earth from the Sun. That was a big problem for Einstein because his theory of relativity forbids any physical influence from propagating faster than light. But his new general theory of relativity contained the solution: the speed of gravitation in his equations is exactly the same as the speed of light. Thus if the Sun were to instantly vanish by some magic, the consequent gravitational change would ripple out across space and reach Earth at the same moment that the Sun is seen to go out. 
More generally, Einstein’s theory predicts that changes in the distribution or motion of masses create wavelike disturbances that travel through space at light speed. In a nutshell, a gravitational wave does for the gravitational field what an electromagnetic wave does for the electromagnetic field; it transports energy through space. Whereas an electromagnetic wave might be caused by a disturbance such as accelerating electric charges in a radio antenna, its gravitational counterpart could be accelerating masses, for example, a pair of stars orbiting in a binary system, or the disturbance caused by a supernova explosion.
…Although Einstein’s equations predicted that gravitational waves should exist, detecting them was quite another matter. The basic problem is that gravitation is incredibly weak. To get some idea, think of the hydrogen atom in which an electron orbits a proton, bound by electric attraction. Well, there will also be a gravitational attraction between the proton and the electron. A quick calculation shows that the electric force is a staggering 1040 times stronger than its gravitational counterpart. All this implies that detecting gravitational waves will be many orders of magnitude harder than detecting electromagnetic waves. 
This challenge has not, however, deterred a succession of doughty scientists from trying. Such is the confidence in Einstein’s general theory of relativity – which has led to many successful predictions such as the bending of light, gravitational lensing and black holes – that physicists are convinced gravitational waves exist. 
How, then, might a gravitational wave from some far astronomical source manifest itself? The effect of a gravitational wave arriving on Earth is easy to visualise. Just as a radio wave wiggles electric charges in a receiving antenna, so a gravitational wave should wiggle a mass. A metal bar, for example, will be set in vibration. So detecting gravitational waves, generated, say, by a supernova is easy in principle – just look for otherwise inexplicable wobbles in metal bars. In the 1970s, a handful of pioneering scientists built just such gravitational bar detectors. Suspended in a vacuum chamber and isolated from seismic disturbances, the bars were monitored for the slightest tremor. Sadly, nothing definitive turned up.
If a gravitational wave travelling perpendicular to the screen passes through the ball on the left, below, the ball distorts, oscillating between the two shapes shown on the right.
But bar detectors were only the first step. A better method was devised using lasers. To see how they work, it is helpful to dwell on one of the central differences between the general theory of relativity and Newton’s theory of gravity. For Newton, gravitation was a force. But Einstein treated it instead as a warping in the geometry of space and time. A gravitational wave, therefore, may be envisaged as a ripple in the fabric of space-time itself. To see what this would do, imagine a tennis ball standing face on to an approaching wave. As the wave passes through the ball, the space-time distortion turns it into an oval, stretching it one direction and compressing it in the perpendicular direction (see diagram below). A pattern of this sort is called a quadrupole, and it is a distinctive signature of gravitational waves.
Translated into practicalities, what this means is that the distance between two points – say, two goal posts on a football field – will wax and wane periodically if a gravitational wave were to pass through the goal. So physicists came up with the idea of suspending mirrors a long way apart and bouncing a laser beam back and forth between them. Any change in the distance between the mirrors would show up in the timing of the laser beam. This is largely the principle behind so-called gravitational wave laser interferometers, like the LIGO Hanford Observatory in Washington State, US, or the Australian one designed by David Blair and his team at the University of Western Australia. To be successful, they need to measure changes in distance so slight they would correspond to the width of a human hair over the distance to the nearest star. So far none of these pieces of equipment has yet registered the slightest shudder. 
Nevertheless, physicists’ faith that gravitational waves existed was bolstered some decades ago with the discovery of a system containing a pair of neutron stars in close mutual orbit. The distance between the two neutron stars can be monitored accurately with radio telescopes because one of the stars emits radio pulses in a highly regular manner. Calculations using the general theory of relativity predict that the orbit of the stars should be slowly decaying as energy is drained out of the system by gravitational waves radiating into space. Sure enough, Russell Hulse and Joseph Taylor of the University of Massachusetts Amherst identified unmistakable signs that the stars were indeed spiralling in towards each other at just the right rate, a discovery for which they were awarded the 1993 Nobel Prize in Physics. While these observations do not constitute a direct detection of gravitational waves, they are a convincing confirmation of their emission. And so we arrive at the intersection of the two stories.
Data released by the BICEP 2 consortium shows the CMB from a patch of sky over the South Pole. The colours showing slight temperature variations and the lines representing swirling patterns of light polarisation, the hallmark of gravitational wave disturbances.Credit: NSF/BICEP2 COLLABORATION/S PL
The largest source of gravitational waves is likely to be the Big Bang itself, and it is precisely such waves that the latest observations, carried out by an international consortium using an instrument called BICEP 2 (for Background Imaging of Cosmic Extragalactic Polarization 2), seems to have detected. 
Gravitational waves possess a unique and distinctive quality: their quadrupole nature. As a result, their space distortions twist the direction of the polarised light in a distinctive pattern. The situation can be roughly compared to looking at a vista above a campfire, where the shimmering air distorts the image in convoluted ways. Sometimes the features are slightly magnified, sometime twisted or buckled. It is the latter sort of disturbance that the BICEP2 team claims to have found. If the claim holds up, then not only will this be an independent observation of the elusive gravitational waves, but it will expose the fingerprint of a physical process that can be traced back to the epoch of inflation, at the very threshold of creation.
So is it game, set and match to inflation? Not quite. The strength of the polarisation being reported took cosmologists somewhat by surprise, and there has been a surge of papers posted online as theorists scramble to incorporate the latest results into their favourite theory. BICEP 2’s measurements will need to be confirmed, most obviously from data garnered by Planck, the European Space Agency’s CMB satellite, which has mapped the whole sky and not just a patch above the South Pole. 
Moreover, not everyone buys into the inflation theory. There are other proposals to solve the problem of
why the universe is so smooth overall, but clumpy on galactic scales. Some of these theories posit epochs prior to the Big Bang that might leave a ghostly imprint in the CMB. Having opened up a new window on the very early universe, cosmologists will eagerly suck every bit of information they can from it and study every clue in an attempt to peer back beyond the start of the universe as we know it.
Even accepting inflation, there are many variants to choose from. One of the issues concerns the energy scale at which inflation happened. Theorists think that the antigravity mechanism can be attributed to a type of field that permeates all space, similar in type, but not in strength, to the one linked to the famous Higgs boson. But the titanic energy needed to create the Higgs is a trillion times lower than that invoked for most models of inflation. Depending on how the polarisation results work out, that enormous inflation energy scale might have to be pushed even higher, towards the all-important point at which all the forces of nature should merge into a single entity. Known as “the Planck scale”, it also marks the energy at which quantum theory and gravitation completely merge, a regime in which zany ideas like strings, space-time foam and extra dimensions come into play. Whether these more exotic effects have left traces buried in the CMB may raise a chuckle from sceptics today. But in another 40 years, who knows? I still hear the echo of the laughter in that lecture room in 1969. 
Paul Davies is a theoretical physicist, cosmologist, astrobiologist and best-selling author.

 

 

 

 

Brown dwarfs are dim star-like bodies that lack the mass to burn

 

The Spitzer and WISE telescopes find close cold neighbor of Sun

The telescopes have discovered what appears to be the coldest brown dwarf known.
RELATED TOPICS: BROWN DWARFS | SPITZER | WISE | STARS
This artist’s conception shows the object named WISE J085510.83-071442.5, the coldest known brown dwarf. Brown dwarfs are dim star-like bodies that lack the mass to burn nuclear fuel as stars do.
Penn State University/NASA/JPL-Caltech

NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) and Spitzer Space Telescope have discovered what appears to be the coldest “brown dwarf” known — a dim star-like body that surprisingly is as frosty as Earth’s North Pole.

Images from the space telescopes also pinpointed the object’s distance to 7.2 light-years away, earning it the title for fourth closest system to our Sun. The closest system, a trio of stars, is Alpha Centauri at about 4 light-years away.

“It’s very exciting to discover a new neighbor of our solar system that is so close,” said Kevin Luhman from Pennsylvania State University, University Park. “And given its extreme temperature, it should tell us a lot about the atmospheres of planets, which often have similarly cold temperatures.”

Brown dwarfs start their lives like stars, as collapsing balls of gas, but they lack the mass to burn nuclear fuel and radiate starlight. The newfound coldest brown dwarf is named WISE J085510.83-071442.5. It has a chilly temperature between –54° and 9° Fahrenheit (–48° to –13° Celsius). Previous record-holders for coldest brown dwarfs, also found by WISE and Spitzer, were about room temperature.

WISE was able to spot the rare object because it surveyed the entire sky twice in infrared light, observing some areas up to three times. Cool objects like brown dwarfs can be invisible when viewed by visible-light telescopes, but their thermal glow, even if feeble, stands out in infrared light. In addition, the closer a body, the more it appears to move in images taken months apart. Airplanes are a good example of this effect: A closer low-flying plane will appear to fly overhead more rapidly than a high-flying one.

“This object appeared to move really fast in the WISE data,” said Luhman. “That told us it was something special.”

After noticing the fast motion of WISE J085510.83-071442.5 in March 2013, Luhman spent time analyzing additional images taken with Spitzer and the Gemini South Telescope on Cerro Pachon in Chile. Spitzer’s infrared observations helped determine the frosty temperature of the brown dwarf. Combined detections from WISE and Spitzer, taken from different positions around the Sun, enabled the measurement of its distance through the parallax effect. This is the same principle that explains why your finger, when held out right in front of you, appears to jump from side to side when you alternate left- and right-eye views.

“It is remarkable that even after many decades of studying the sky, we still do not have a complete inventory of the Sun’s nearest neighbors,” said Michael Werner from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California. “This exciting new result demonstrates the power of exploring the universe using new tools, such as the infrared eyes of WISE and Spitzer.”

WISE J085510.83-071442.5 is estimated to be three to 10 times the mass of Jupiter. With such a low mass, it could be a gas giant similar to Jupiter that was ejected from its star system. But scientists estimate it is probably a brown dwarf rather than a planet since brown dwarfs are known to be fairly common. If so, it is one of the least massive brown dwarfs known.

In March 2013, Luhman’s analysis of the images from WISE uncovered a pair of much warmer brown dwarfs at a distance of 6.5 light-years, making that system the third closest to the Sun. His search for rapidly moving bodies also demonstrated that the outer solar system probably does not contain a large undiscovered planet, which has been referred to as “Planet X” or “Nemesis.”