Space finger for the new year (Photo: NASA, ESA, N. Smith / UC Berkeley, and The Hubble Heritage Team / STScI / AURA)
A cosmic cloud 7,500 light-years away has provided scientists with the perfect illustration for the events of 2020.
The relatively small lump of matter in the Carina Nebula would not have received a separate name under normal circumstances. But its shape led to the fact that scientists gave him the nickname «Daring finger. “
And it really does look like an ancient obscene gesture that astronomers note means «go away, but in much harsher words. “
In fact, Defiant Finger is what is known as Boca’s Globule. These are small, dark, dense clumps of dust and gas that are often the birthplaces of stars. As the denser areas of the cloud condense further, they can collapse under their own gravity.
Stars can form in Daring Finger, made of material equal to 6 times the mass of the Sun; because it is so dense that it is difficult to look inside. This glow from external sources appears to be light from nearby bright stars.
Because young stars are usually bright and hot, they strike their surroundings with radiation. The outer part of Finger’s globule is likely illuminated and ionized by either the Wolf-Rayet star WR 25, a very short-lived massive star at the end of its life cycle.
But while they are glowing, these stars also collapse: slowly but surely they evaporate «Daring finger. ” At current estimates of the rate of mass loss, the dust cloud has a projected lifespan of 200,000 to 1 million years.
This is not very long in the cosmic sense. But that’s enough to make a statement: a kind of cry into the void, a gesture in the face of inevitability.
Previously NV wrote that an American entrepreneur and one of the first space tourists said that he delivered the remains of the Star Trek series actor to the ISS without permission. This was the posthumous wish of actor James Doohan.
Doohan died in 2005 at the age of 85, and is best known for his role as Scott Montgomery in the science fiction television series Star Trek (Star Trek). The actor’s posthumous desire was to move his ashes into space.
In 2008, they tried to fulfill this desire using a SpaceX Falcon 1 rocket, but the launch was unsuccessful.
In 2012, the new SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket successfully delivered part of James Doohan’s ashes into orbit, and since then the actor’s remains have circled our planet about 70 thousand times.