Defined by Nothing (and Everything)

This is a brand spanking new simulation of how scientists think quasar jets behave. First, some definitions: It's now believed that quasars, blazars, and radio galaxies are all actually the same phenomena: Jets of matter streaming away from the active black hole at the center of the galaxy (as pictured above). We give this phenomena different names due to where in relation we are to this jet - head on, and it's a blazar; at an angle, it's a quasar; at 90 degrees, it's a radio galaxy. A nice analogy is the old saw about blind men describing an elephant - each will have a different description for the same thing.

Anyways, black holes are no longer thought of as simple engines of destruction - as shown above, not only do they spit out a great deal of matter, but they are active agents in the creation of not only stars, but galaxies of stars. Come back with me, to the beginning of time.....

It's a little bit after the Big Bang. Shit is hot, and dense, but uniformly blah. Stuff keeps spreading out and cooling down bit by bit, until the first atoms form (hydrogen and helium). Cooling and spreading continues, and now we have incredibly large clouds of hydrogen and helium, which begin to form denser pockets. These dense pockets continue to get denser as gravity draws matter to matter, until POOF! A star is born (consider: There was a 1st star), and another, and another, and so on. But these early stars lived fast and hot, and died young. Not long after they started forming, we enter the era of the Supernova, which must have been extreme. All these young stars exploded, creating all kinds of new elements in the process, but also, and most critically, creating the first black holes.

This is still not long after the moment of creation. Black holes start doing their thing - sucking down matter and energy. In so doing, many, many, many more stars are created, and some of these explode, forming more black holes, which merge with other black holes, and so on and so on until we have a supermassive black hole, and with this, we have our first Galaxy, which is really nothing but a collection of stars in orbit around a central black hole.


So, in conclusion for now, everything about our reality was formed in large part during this era of black hole creation. We owe our existence to this phenomena of apparent absolute destruction, which has "nothing" lurking at its core.

Form is emptiness, emptiness is form. Also, more spirals.