A black hole as captured by the Event Horizon Telescope
Photograph: EHT Collaboration
As a nihilistic anti-theist, it made me very happy when astronomers released the first image of a supermassive black hole yesterday, thereby demonstrating that at the heart of the universe is not a loving presence, or judgemental God, but rather an enigmatic object defined by its absence and darkness.
Certainly that's true for the Messier 87 galaxy (or M87, as it's known); a giant elliptical galaxy, fifty-five million light years from Earth in the constellation of Virgo, that was discovered by the French star-gazer Charles Messier in 1781.
And it's doubtless true for our galaxy also (in fact, the EHT team are presently working on producing an image of the black hole at the centre of the Milky Way and hope to have such sometime soon).
Further, one is tempted to suggest that if there's any truth in the old saying that suggests the microcosm corresponds with the macrocosm - as above, so below - then maybe it's the case that what was once called the soul is nothing but a tiny and mysterious core of chaos; a dark source of eternal creation that exists beyond the event horizon of the known self; a place wherein psychological law collapses and all human reality is distorted beyond recognition.
And who knows, maybe we'll one day even have a picture of that ...
Certainly that's true for the Messier 87 galaxy (or M87, as it's known); a giant elliptical galaxy, fifty-five million light years from Earth in the constellation of Virgo, that was discovered by the French star-gazer Charles Messier in 1781.
And it's doubtless true for our galaxy also (in fact, the EHT team are presently working on producing an image of the black hole at the centre of the Milky Way and hope to have such sometime soon).
Further, one is tempted to suggest that if there's any truth in the old saying that suggests the microcosm corresponds with the macrocosm - as above, so below - then maybe it's the case that what was once called the soul is nothing but a tiny and mysterious core of chaos; a dark source of eternal creation that exists beyond the event horizon of the known self; a place wherein psychological law collapses and all human reality is distorted beyond recognition.
And who knows, maybe we'll one day even have a picture of that ...
Notes
The astonishing image of the black hole was captured by the Event Horizon Telescope (which is actually a network of eight radio telescopes spanning locations from Antarctica to Spain and Chile) using a technique known as interferometry.
Of course, crackpot conspiracy theorists are, with depressing predictability, already claiming online that - just like the NASA moon landings - the picture is fake and the 200 scientists involved in the collaborative research project are therefore wilfully attempting to deceive the public as part of some elaborate hoax.
Brilliant (or darkly brilliant) little post. Although aren't gods, by definition, supernatural and therefore possessed of a tendency to surpass human cameras (and indeed the limited perceptual spectrum of human beings as a whole)?
ReplyDeleteThe paradox of a photograph of a black hole - an entity that, by definition, consumes light - might perhaps be pointed out in this domain, whose incredibility, though apparent reality, perhaps contributes to some of the more sceptical responses to this highly entertaining act of avant-garde photoastronomy.
To supply the obvious Nietzschean quote, 'you must have chaos inside you to give birth to a dancing star'. Which means, we think, we might, in some enigmatic and originary sense, indeed 'be' chaos, but it's the prancing and procreative beauty that is brought out of it that counts. (For the Greeks, as Nietzsche surely well knew, chaos was the mother of Eros.)
Apologies for our stupidity - the 'photograph' is of course not a photograph (which would be impossible), but a technoelectrically generated image depicting an 'event horizon'.
ReplyDeleteGlad to clear that one up! :-)
I like it when commentators offer pre-emptive apologies, clarify their own positions, correct their own errors and so on, as it saves me having to reply in a manner that looks a bit pedantic and superior and overly keen to have the last word.
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