While most of us were busy with our cluttered, frantic, and questionably purposive lives, a few among us spent time and intellectual energies on more esoteric matters. Twenty years into the twenty-first century, a group of astronomers devoted their days and nights to revising the ways in which the boundaries of galaxies were determined. Traditionally, galaxies’ boundaries were defined by using fixed levels of brightness (surface brightness isophotes) as a means of determining galaxies’ sizes. A team of astronomers, led by Nushkia Chamba of the NASA Ames Research Center, developed a physically motivated criteria for the boundary of a galaxy based on the required gas density for star formation. A better understanding of astrophysics and related matters might enable me to more fully explain Chamba’s criteria. In the absence of that understanding, though, I willingly accept the results of her explorations. My acceptance of her work, though, did not answer the question that led me to answers to other questions. The question for which I was seeking an answer was this: Are all stars a part of a galaxy, or do some stars exist beyond the limits of galaxies? Further research led me to the answer: Most, but not all, stars belong to galaxies…as far as we know, based on our present understanding of the universe. My original question, though, was even less pragmatic. Rather than call it a question, though, I probably should call it a matter of general curiosity concerning subjects about which knowledge is pointless. If there were a corner of the universe, where would it be? In an attempt to recover from the boundless irrelevance of my general curiosity, I kept looking. That’s when I came across Nushkia Chamba and her work.
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We’ve begun watching Lynley, a murder mystery series involving two mismatched detectives on BritBox. The series is only four episodes long (about 1 hour each), but based on what we’ve seen so far, I hope it is renewed for another season. I started watching Los Gringo Hunters on Netflix. It’s an action series in which a specialized Mexican police team is tasked with catching and deporting U.S. citizens who have fled to Mexico to escape imprisonment in the U.S. I find it entertaining. And I am a little embarrassed that I find such a show appealing.
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The veins on the back of my hand and wrist are clearly visible. I would think I should be able to see those veins move, if only very slightly, with each beat of my heart. But they do not move. When I stare at my hands, they remain absolutely still, as if they had been carved in marble. I can hear my heart beat, though. And I can hear my stomach growl. Those noises are the reasons I want to experience total silence; just to understand what the experience is like. One’s body is a mysterious amalgamation of baffling pieces, sewn together with tissues so thin they are almost invisible. The thought of being able to see inside the body reminds me of something I had as a kid: a clear plastic figure shaped like a human body. Inside, colorful models of all the organs and muscles and tendons and tissues and the like were clearly visible. By removing the top half of the clear figure, I could remove all of the individual pieces. I should have kept that figure. I wonder where it is now?
