Spectra Terrestrial

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Space has always been an interest of mine. My apartment has books about black holes, the solar system, and astrophotography. Most are old and outdated, featuring discarded hypotheses on how reality is put together and how it will come apart. Pluto is still a planet and Russia is still the U.S.S.R. There are a lot of artistic interpretations of planets, stars, and nebulae. In newer books, many of these paintings are replaced by photographs.

One of my favourites is a quasar called the Einstein Cross. Quasars are like blowtorches ignited by powerful frictional and electromagnetic forces (such as those around a black hole.) In the photograph, there are five points that connect into the shape of a cross. There's only one quasar, but it sits directly behind a galaxy. The galaxy bends its light like an old spoon so a single object looks like five. This is called gravitational lensing. Each point emits bright blue light. We tend to associate blue with the cold here on Earth, but it's one of the hottest, most high-energy colours in the universe.

The funny thing about light is that it travels at a finite speed. We don't notice it much here. Light from the sun is eight and a half minutes old. Every sunset you and I ever see is from eight and a half minutes in the past. The farther we look into space, the more outdated the images become. Like looking at older and older books about the same subject. Since quasars are one of the brightest, most distant objects in the visible universe, their light is some of the oldest we ever see. The Einstein Cross is about eight billion light years away. It's a peek at something from eight billion years in the past.

We never see things as they are, only as they were. But that's the solace of space. Somewhere out there, an epitaph of light is racing across the cosmos carrying our image. We're all ready ghosts locked inside a pocket of time.