A member of the Local Group of galaxies, irregular galaxy Sextans A is 10 million light years distant. The bright Milky Way foreground stars appear yellowish in this view. Beyond them lie the stars of Sextans A with young blue star clusters clearly visible. Courtesy of Google, from whom all (modern) blessings flow.
Author Dan Brown's latest blockbuster, The Lost Symbol, deals with coded messages, ancient knowledge, noetic science, and the Masonic Order--a more or less coherent plot. This plot is no less plausible than his other plots, and will no doubt push the total number of books sold past the 100,000,000 mark. It will make a very good Ron Howard movie with actors who by now are a reperatory company. A phrase that recurs in the book "as above, so below." My "as above, so below" will look at some odd symmetries between the stars above us, and the tiny, points of light inside us. I will look for symmetry between outer space and inner space (that inner space within which our selves live--the three dimensional neocortex of our brain). Were the neocortex (NCX) flattened, it would have the length and width of an ordinary linen table napkin, but be several times thicker. Within this rather small volume of tissue, convoluted and overlaid upon the other brain structures, our conscious self flits among the neurons and their many synaptic connections. First the heavens above:
There are an estimated 100,000,000,000 stars in the Milky Way galaxy, which is our home town galaxy in this Universe. There are lots of galaxies in the Universe and many are grouped together. Our group is called, prosaically, the Local Group. It is made up of the Messier catalogued objects M31 (Andromeda), M32 and M110 (satellite structures of Andromeda), and M33 (Triangulum). The Local Group's diameter is 10,000,000 light years, meaning that light will take ten million years to travel from one edge to the other. So, unless we can make holes in space/time or find existing holes, a person would take more than ten million years to travel from one edge to the other. Why would anyone want to do that? Well our Milky Way galaxy is part of the Local Group, so a Local Group Confederation warship will need that capability some day. For sure. The dominant members of the LG are Andromeda and Milky Way. Hubble's The Realm of the Nebulae explains what went into studying and characterizing the LG. (I wish the candy bar named Milky Way had never been invented because saying "Hi, I'm from the Milky Way" is going to sound so dorky. And, to make things worse yet, the American Milky Way bar is other countries' Mars bar, and other countries' Milky Way is basically our 3 Musketeers' Bar. At any rate, it's too late, the damage has been done. Thank you, Mars Candy Company for undermining our galactic dignitas.)
Map of the Local Group whose weighted center is between Andromeda and the Milky Way.
http://www.google.com/imgres
How many galaxies are there in our Universe? The computer modeling involved in answering this question is difficult even though the physics is straightforward Newton. Below is a windy explanation why astrophysicists need better, more expensive, and (architecturally) dedicated machines to answer the question:
"The basic reason why the investigation of the dynamical evolution of galaxy clusters (as well as the evolution of single galaxies, or even globular clusters) is so computer intensive actually is due to a fundamental mathematical property of the equations that determine this evolution. The gravitational attraction between all objects is described by Newton's Laws, which you are probably familiar with. One law states that the gravitational force between two objects is a constant multiplied by the product of the two masses, divided by the distance separating the objects squared. In most of the solar system examples we are presented with on a 'day to day' level, the system can be described as two bodies. For each of the planets, we can treat their orbital evolution largely as if they were a single object in orbit about the Sun (the other planets produce only minor perturbations to this simple two-body orbit). Likewise, the Moon's orbit about the Earth can be treated largely as a two-body problem, since the distance between the Earth and Moon is much smaller than that between the Earth-Moon system and the Sun. Mathematically, the two-body problem is one that we refer to as 'integrable'. What this means is that it is possible to write down the solution to the equations of motion in closed form. Then for any set of initial conditions, we can use this closed form solution to determine the positions and velocities of the two bodies for all time.
When even one more body is added to the mix, the problem becomes 'non-integrable'. This has two important consequences. The first is the equations that determine the evolution are no longer in closed form. The second is that the system can now have parameter ranges for which the evolution is extremely sensitive to the initial conditions of the system. Very small changes in the initial conditions (positions and velocities) can lead to drastically different evolutions. Putting these two consequences together, you can probably see now why one needs a lot of computer power: galaxy clusters are comprised of numerous objects (galaxies) which are themselves made up of individual stars, interacting with each other. There are clever ways to make the calculation of the cluster evolution less computationally intensive, such as concentrating only on the interactions of nearest neighbor stars, and treating the contribution from the numerous more distant stars as a smooth gravitational potential. You still need to have a lot of computer power to do this. The sensitivity to initial conditions means that researchers often try a very large number of initial conditions so they can get an idea of the statistical behavior of the interactions.
To answer your specific questions: the need for teraflop or faster computers to do these calculations is not recent. However, the development of special purpose computers (that are hard wired to do nothing but the cluster evolution calculation) and novel ways of networking computers to achieve greater speeds, are currently very active areas of computational astrophysics research. The sophistication of the cluster evolution models is constantly growing. None of these calculations are aimed at trying to determine if our cluster is the center of the Universe. One of the fundamental assumptions of modern cosmology is that no single location in the Universe is special, and that there is no meaning to the concept 'the center of the Universe.' However, the average observer in any location in the Universe would observe galaxies to be receding from her position, and so might erroneously suppose herself to be at the center of the Universe. In any case, the dynamical evolution of the cluster is a local phenomenon, not connected to the overall expansion of the Universe."
A student asked the "how many galaxies" question:
"A recent German super-computer simulation estimates that the number may be as high as 500 billion! Can someone please clarify the accepted educated ballpark figure? Thanks a billion!"
The student got a better answer, at least in terms of getting a number for an answer.
"The methods used to achieve such number varies, and therefore, the results would vary, too. Also, as new and improved technology becomes available, astronomers can detect fainter objects that were not seen before. These objects that have come into view will in turn change the estimated number of galaxies.
For example, in 1999 the Hubble Space Telescope estimated that there were 125 billion galaxies in the universe, and recently with the new camera HST has observed 3,000 visible galaxies, which is twice as much as they observed before with the old camera. We're emphasizing "visible" because observations with radio telescopes, infrared cameras, x-ray cameras, etc. would detect other galaxies that are not detected by Hubble. As observations keep on going and astronomers explore more of our universe, the number of galaxies detected will increase."
We need a politician who sits on some federal budget committee to give us the big number. Take the number from ten years ago, improve the Hubble Space Telescope so that the number doubles, add the other galaxies that a telescope seeing only within the visible spectrum will not see (those galaxies detectable by radio wave emissions, x-ray emissions, infrared emissions, and those whose emissions no telescope yet built sees), and what do we get for a number? I say 1,000,000,000,000 galaxies exist in our Universe.
What are the periodic movements of the earth and the heavenly bodies? Where is the center of the Universe? How fast are things moving, and in relationship to what? (This was to Einstein what the apple was to Newton.)
Explanation: Our Earth is not at rest. The Earth moves around the Sun. The Sun orbits the center of the Milky Way Galaxy. The Milky Way Galaxy orbits in the Local Group. The Local Group falls toward the Virgo Cluster of Galaxies. But these speeds are less than the speed that all of these objects together move relative to the microwave background.
COBE Dipole: Speeding Through the Universe Credit: NASA, COBE, DMR, Four-Year Sky Map
The Sun orbits the center of the Milky Way at about 250 km/second and it takes about 220 million years to complete an orbit.
So our earth spins, wobbles, bobs and weaves around the sun which rotates like a gas planet--on its axis but differentially faster at its equator (27 days) than at its poles (31 days), and which moves side to side within the Orion arm of the Milky Way pinwheel**, while the entire pinwheel of our spiral galaxy rotates, and in turn dances with Andromeda, the Magellanic clouds big and small, and the thirty dwarfs in the Local Group reel. There is no center to the Universe, so we must assume there is no rotation of the entirety. But one does wonder . . .
**We are nearing the mid plane of the galaxy and will be at the midpoint 12.21.2012, 11:11 AM GMT at which point the Mayan Age of the Jaguar, the Fifth Age of Man will end.
The NASA Goddard Space Flight Center has an educational site. Above and below courtesy of them: http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/ask_astro/answers/021127a.html.
Known to Al-Sufi about AD 905. Messier 31 (M31, NGC 224) is the famous Andromeda galaxy, our nearest large neighbor galaxy, forming the Local Group of galaxies together with its companions (including M32 and M110, two bright dwarf elliptical galaxies), our Milky Way and its companions, M33, and others.
Visible to the naked eye even under moderate conditions, this object was known as the "little cloud" to the Persian astronomer Abd-al-Rahman Al-Sufi, who described and depicted it in 964 AD in his Book of Fixed Stars: It must have been observed by and commonly known to Persian astronomers at Isfahan as early as 905 AD.
The magnificent M81 spiral galaxy takes center stage in this ultraviolet image from NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer. Young stars appear as wisps of bluish-white swirling around a central golden glow, which comes from a group of much older stars. The large fluffy bluish-white material to the left of M81 is a neighboring galaxy called Homberg IX. This galaxy is practically invisible to the naked human eye. However, when viewed in ultraviolet light, a region that is actively forming young stars is revealed. Image and caption by NASA.
So, in accordance with the theme of this post, as above, so below: we found the number of stars in our Milky Way galaxy to be 100,000,000,000.
And we found by my estimate, all inclusive and psychically derived, the grand total number of galaxies in our Universe to be 1,000,000,000,000.
The Universe has no center. It composed is dynamic matter/energy, expanding from an initial singularity.
Then we have inner space: that organ lying within the bounds of the cranial vault, weighing 1400 grams, suspended in cerebrospinal fluid, organized in a number of ways, and home to the NCX within which our conscious self lives--there in the dark, with thermostatically controlled temperature, a guaranteed minimum concentration of glucose supplied in the generous blood flow accorded this most vital of organs. The NCX has no center, expanded from an initial cell that differentiated into ectoderm and made the primitive neural tube then the brain and finally, in a kind of ontogenic recapitulation of phylogeny, the human embryo's head end develops frontal bossing and the "newest thing in brain evolution," the neocortex expands. Hence the human propensity for big headed babies and ceaserian sections.
Romanes's 1892 copy of Ernst Haeckel's controversial embryo drawings (this version of the figure is often attributed incorrectly to Haeckel).There are 100,000,000,000 neurons in the human brain. These neurons have a staggering 100,000,000,000,000 synaptic connections among themselves. Even the General Accounting Office can't cope with this many of anything. This is more connectivity in a single human brain than galaxies in a hundred Universes! If that doesn't blow you away, nothing will. One hundred trillion synaptic connections.
This is the central nervous system of the human, dissected free of the cranium and spine within which it is lodged. It floats in cerebrospinal fluid (CSF). Its delicate and complex structures are protected from trauma by sturdy mineralized bone tissue and the effect of floatation in CSF.
The big cell above the two arrows is the neuron. (The arrows point to inclusions in the cell.)
The human brain consists of about 100 billion (1011) neurons, which altogether form about 100 trillion (1014) synaptic connections with each other. A crucial mechanism for the generation of this complex wiring pattern is the formation of neuronal branches. The neurobiologists Dr. Hannes Schmidt and Professor Fritz G. Rathjen at the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine (MDC) Berlin-Buch, Germany, have now discovered a molecule that regulates this vital process. At the same time they have succeeded in elucidating the signaling cascade induced by this molecule (PNAS, Early Edition, 2009, doi:10.1073)*.
http://www.mdc-berlin.de/en/news/2009/20090921-mdc_researchers_discover_molecule_responsi/index.html
There are as many neurons in our brain as there are stars in the Milky Way galaxy. Each tiny gray blob of jello is connected to many others. There is no central processing unit in the brain. The entire volume of the neocortex is organized in layers or hierarchies. But even with a microscope all parts of the neocortex look the same. It is undifferentiated in that way. Lose the visual cortex early on and that part of the neocortex might be allocated to another neural task. Like the Universe, the neocortex, or inner space within which our conscious self resides, has no center.
There are one hundred times many more synaptic connections in our brain than there are galaxies in our universe.
There is no center, or central processing unit in our neocortex.
Inner space functions electrochemically, the neurons and their synaptic connections are matter/energy.
The brain began with a single differentiated cell and expanded from this singularity to become all of our inner space.
Neurons are created continually just as neurons die continually, and here inner space is like outer space where stars are birthed and stars die in a great cycle of life and death.
So there you have it, Dan Brown's "as above, so below," so to speak. We do have an unexpected symmetries between outer space and inner space, as above.
Let's take a tour of inner space photographs, as we did with outer space.
Schematic representation of a sensory neuron. When the axon of the sensory neuron grows into the gray matter of the spinal cord, two types of branching can be observed: At the dorsal root entry zone the axon shaft divides into two branches (1), which continue to grow on the surface of the spinal cord in opposite directions. Out of these branches collaterals then sprout in several places (2) thus enabling the transmission of a signal to several target cells. (Drawing: Hannes Schmidt / Copyright: MDC).
The blue color shows the dispersion area of CNP in a mouse embryo twelve and a half days after fertilization. Through alterations via genetic engineering the original gene for CNP was replaced by the lacZ gene in the depicted mouse. In a color reaction the expression of CNP in the tissue can thus be made visible. (Photo: Hannes Schmidt / Copyright: MD
Dorsal view of the spinal cord with single visible sensory neurons A) Wild-type with bifurcations marked by arrows and B) CNP knock-out mouse. (Photo: Hannes Schmidt / Copyright: MDC).
The above pictures from an experiment tracking the process of synapse formation. Lastly, let's look at brain/body size. We humans like to think our inner space is a lot more spacious than that of the lower creatures. Size matters whether in galaxies or in neocortices.
The human weighs 62,000 grams and her brain weighs 1,400 grams. The baboon weighs 30,000 grams and its brain weighs 140 grams.
My wife thinks I should not leave this post as it is
, too cold out there. So I leave you with some Celtic wisdom, courtesy of the Bard of Connemara, author of Anam Cara and To Bless the Space Between Us, A Book of Blessings; John O'Donohue, a man from whom many blessings flow.The Umbra Nihili
"In a vast universe that often seems sinister and unaware of us, we need the presence and shelter of love to transfigure our loneliness. This cosmic loneliness is the root of all inner loneliness. All of our life, everything we do, think, and feel is surrounded by nothingness. Hence we become afraid so easily. The fourteenth-century mystic Meister Eckhart says that all of human life stands under the shadow of nothingness, the umbra nihili. Nevertheless, love is the sister of the soul. Love is the deepest language and presence of soul. In and through the warmth and creativity of love, the soul shelters us from the bleakness of that nothingness. We cannot fill up our emptiness with objects, possessions, or people. We have to go deeper into that emptiness; then we will find beneath nothingness the flame of love waiting to warm us."
Anam Cara, pp. 11 and 12, John O'Donohue; ISBN 978-0-06-092943-5, Cliff Street Books/Harper Collins Publishers.
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