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In what was previously deemed impossible, an actual picture has been taken of a supermassive black hole in the center of a giant galaxy 55 million light years away. It was made possible by creating and using a tightly linked network of radio telescopes located all the way from Hawaii to the South Pole. Just the computer processing alone of the data took more than two years.[i]
Taking a Picture of the Event Horizon of a Real Black Hole
Nearby stars were detected years ago slingshoting around an incredibly dense object at the center of our Milky Way galaxy. The tracking of these stars has provided one proof of the existence of massive galactic black holes.
However, to actually zoom in and focus on the black hole itself from a radio telescope or a collection of them and see the energetic explosions swirling near its completely black event horizon, beyond which even light cannot escape, seemed next to impossible.[ii]
It would be like trying to read the inscription on a US quarter dollar in Los Angeles using a telescope 2,400 miles away, about the distance to Washington DC. Imagine how few photons and how few image pixels originating from that quarter that even the best light processing telescopes would be able to detect and use in their photography.[iii]
Here is the image of the M87 galactic black hole taken and processed by the EHT coordinated radio telescope system.
Video #1: in Australia’s Science Channel link referenced above and repeated below, an excellent video.
Einstein’s Theory of Relativity Still Intact
“Surrounded by a fiery maelstrom of infalling matter over a hundred billion degrees in temperature, we see [in the EHT photograph] the event horizon, a region of deathly calm in the most chaotic region of space ever imaged. This black hole allows us to measure Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity in the drastically curving region of spacetime around an event horizon, and Einstein’s Theory passes yet one more test with flying colours.”
“The image confirms that black holes do have event horizons as opposed to dim but solid surfaces, and was in full agreement with predictions from Einstein’s theory of general relativity.”[iv]
Video #2: National Geographic video: “black holes 101”, a great primer course on black holes.
Black Holes as They Really Are—Not Just Artistic Impressions
The first picture for this article [note to editor: picture #0] is an artistic rendition of a galactic supermassive black hole and is the lead graphic in this 2014 article from phys.org entitled “Astronomers poised to capture image of supermassive black hole” being before the attempt to snap the picture in 2017.
Here is another artistic rendition that I think shows even better the spacetime gravitational bending that is going on in the accretion disk.[v]
A great picture, along with many other great artistic impressions in this file:[vi]
And, another analogy:
Think of a World War II anti-aircraft searchlight with the guards and operators hidden in the glare. That is what the EHT project is trying to do: “See” the totally black donut hole of the event horizon while the X-ray and even occasional Gamma Ray bursts blow up with extreme energy in the accretion disk causing even more fantastic bending of the space-time continuum in the process.
It would be like the pilot in the plane caught in the searchlight trying to make out the guards and operators with the glare of the searchlight in his face and throughout the airplane overshadowing being able to see anything else around it.[vii]
After More than a Decade of Effort—M87 Gives Amazing Results
After more than a decade of effort by over 200 leading scientists across the world, we now have created the most sophisticated and powerful synchronized network of radio telescopes ever, “a virtual telescope the size of the Earth.”
And, with extensive use of networks of powerful computers to analyze and process the data collected, the above photograph (Picture #1) has now been published of the supersized central black hole event horizon of one of the brightest galaxies in the Virgo supercluster. The galaxy is a giant elliptical galaxy named M87 and contains about a trillion stars. [viii] [ix]
The EHT was able to zoom in on the 26 billion miles in diameter black hole event horizon at the center of M87, containing the mass of 6.5 Billion Suns, 55 million light years away from earth.
For comparison, the diameter of Pluto’s orbit is about 7.4 billion miles – so this black hole in M87 is about four times the size of our solar system out to Pluto’s orbit.[x]
How to make a Virtual Radio Telescope Approximating the Diameter of Earth
“The new image is the stunning achievement of the Event Horizon Telescope project, a global collaboration of more than 200 scientists using an array of observatories scattered around the world, from Hawaii to the South Pole. Combined, this array acts like a radio telescope the size of Earth, and it was able to collect more than a petabyte of data while staring at M87’s black hole in April 2017. It then took two years for scientists to assemble the mugshot.”[xi]
Also working on picture of our Milky Way Galaxy’s central black hole
The central black hole in the center of our Milky Way galaxy is a powerful x-ray emission source designated Sagitarius A* (“A star”). The Event Horizon Telescope and computers have also been working on a picture of the event horizon of the central black hole for our galaxy as well as for M87.
One of the obstacles to getting that picture of our galactic center published was a city-sized neutron star that has been right in the way, in front of the black hole and has had a huge flare up that blocked observations of the black hole behind it. The neutron star has since settled down and now more telescopes can distinguish between the neutron star and the black hole. [xii]
Sagittarius A* is 26,000 light years away and within the densest part of our spiral galaxy. It is between us and the Milky Way central black hole. M87, on the other hand, is a giant elliptical galaxy with little dust blocking our view of the core of the galaxy. But, M87 is 55 million light years away. So there are advantages and disadvantages for photographing each of the two black holes.[xiii]
Tracking Stars with Orbits Very Close to the Milky Way Galactic Center
In 2008, A project was completed to zero in and track stars that are
slingshotting around the Milky Way central black hole. The closest two stars
had orbits of only 16 years and 11 years, respectively. The data ruled out the
possibility that Sgr A* contains a cluster of dark stellar objects or a mass of
degenerate fermions, strengthening the evidence for a massive black hole.
Here is a diagram of the orbits and a simulation of several of these stars in their orbits. Star S2 or S0-2 is the one that ended up with the 16 year orbit around the black hole at the Milky Way galactic center. S0-102 is not in this diagram but ended up being discovered as a star that had an even shorter orbital period of 11 years, better than S2’s 16 years.[xiv]
Caption: Simulation of stars in close proximity to the black hole in the constellation Sagittarius at the center of our galaxy. This is right in the heart of the most dense portions of the center of the Milky Way and to be able to zero in on them is nothing short of amazing.
Is this Black Hole at the Center of our Galaxy Going to Gobble Up the Galaxy?
The answer is NO. The black hole is not ingesting material very fast. It took billions of years to pull in the 4,000,000 solar masses currently there in the black hole.
“The black hole at the center of the Milky Way [is not] pulling material in like a vacuum cleaner, it serves as a gravitational anchor for a group of stars to orbit around, for billions of years.[xv]
“In order for a black hole to actually consume a star, it needs to make a direct hit. To get within the event horizon, which is only about 17 times bigger than the Sun. If a star gets close, without hitting, it’ll get torn apart, but still, it doesn’t happen very often.”
“The problem happens when these stars interact with one another through their own gravity, and mess with each other’s orbits. A star that would have been orbiting happily for billions of years might get deflected into a collision course with the black hole. But this happens very rarely.”
“Worlds without Number” (Moses 1:33)
When I discovered in 2011 this study of the stars zooming around the central black hole of our galaxy, I began to search for a number as to how dense that central core of the galaxy is and how many stars are nearby that 4 million Sun “gravity anchor.”
“Within a parsec (3.2 ly) of the galactic center, the estimated number density of stars is about 10 million stars per cubic parsec. By contrast, the number density of stars in the Sun’s neighborhood is a puny 0.2 star per cubic parsec.”
“Because stars are so closely packed together near the galactic center, the night sky for inhabitants there would be spectacular. Near the galactic center, the average distance between neighboring stars would be only 1000 AU (about a light-week). [For comparison, Pluto is 5.5 light hours (39.5 AU) from the Sun.] If the Sun were located within a parsec of the galactic center, there would be a million stars in our sky with apparent brightness greater than Sirius. The total starlight in the night sky would be about 200 times greater than the light of the full moon; and you could easily read the newspaper at midnight, relying on starlight alone.”[xvi]
There is only ONE Sun, our star, within a parsec of any other star in our part of the galaxy. The three star Alpha Centauri system is four light years away from our Sun, more than a parsec (3.2 ly).[xvii]
Joseph Smith declared in the King Follett discourse shortly before his death:[xviii]
The righteous “shall rise again to dwell in everlasting burnings in immortal glory,” [emphasis added]
In the center of our Galaxy might there be celestial worlds?
“If You Could Hie to Kolob in the Twinkling of an Eye …” [xix]
Miracles by the Hand of God
Are we not witnesses of mighty miracles by the hand of God wherein mortal humans can receive great knowledge and are able to do a great work of discovery and expanding our knowledge of science and astronomy as described in this article?
Please read and ponder the concepts from the documents and web sites referenced in this article. Ask yourself: “Could any mortal man or men obtain this knowledge and do this work independent of divine revelation?”
As the time approached to hide up the record of the Book of Mormon, Moroni proclaimed his witness by the Holy Ghost of the God of miracles “who created the heavens and the earth.”
“I will show unto you a God of miracles, even the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob; and it is that same God who created the heavens and the earth, and all things that in them are.” (Mormon 9:11) [emphasis added]
Once again, that very large set: “All things.”
And, from the Psalms, here is another powerful witness of God’s work that we see in the monumental discoveries in the heavens in our dispensation, the great final dispensation of the fullness of times.
“The heavens declare the glory of God” (Psalms 19:1)
[i] Matt Williams, “Astronomers oised to capture image of supermassive black hole,” phys.org, December 1, 2014.
[ https://phys.org/news/2014-12-astronomers-poised-capture-image-supermassive.html ]
Picture #0: artistic rendition of black hole.
“Astonomers react to the first images of a black hole,” Australia’s science channel, australiascience.tv, April 11, 2019.
[ https://phys.org/news/2014-12-astronomers-poised-capture-image-supermassive.html ]
[ii] “black holes,” Aerospace.photo,
[https://aerospace.photo/post/176577105115/black-holes ]
“A black hole is a region of spacetime exhibiting such strong gravitational effects that nothing—not even particles and electromagnetic radiation such as light—can escape from inside it. The theory of general relativity predicts that a sufficiently compact mass can deform spacetime to form a black hole. The boundary of the region from which no escape is possible is called the event horizon. Although the event horizon has an enormous effect on the fate and circumstances of an object crossing it, no locally detectable features appear to be observed. In many ways a black hole acts like an ideal black body, as it reflects no light.”
“S2 (star),” wikipedia.org, retrieved 5/5/2019.
[ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S2_(star) ]
“S2, also known as S0–2, is a star that is located close to the radio source Sagittarius A*, orbiting it with an orbital period of 16.0518 years,”
[iii] “Astronomers react to the first images of a black hole,” australiascience.tv,April 11, 2019.
[ https://australiascience.tv/astronomers-react-to-the-first-images-of-a-black-hole ]
Brian Resnick, “This is the first-ever picture of a black hole,” vox.com, April 10, 2019.
[ https://www.vox.com/2019/4/10/18302343/first-picture-black-hole-eht-photo-event-horizon ]
“Black holes are black because the singularity sucks up all the light around it. Every ray of light, every photon that goes near the black hole, actually bends toward the black hole and gets completely removed from the universe as we know it,” Dimitrios Psaltis, an astrophysicist at the University of Arizona and one of the lead scientists on the effort, says. In this way, the black hole casts a shadow on its surroundings. “Even though the black hole does not have a surface, it removes all the light that goes near it, so it behaves like a very dark object,” he explains. There’s a reason we’ve never seen a picture of a black hole until today. It’s not just that black holes are dark; they’re actually very small, and are surrounded by bright gas and swirling material (the M87 black hole shoots out a jet of hot plasma that’s more than 4,000 light-years long). In science-speak, the shadow cast by the M87 black hole is around 40 microarcseconds wide when viewed from the Earth. An arcsecond is 1/3600th of a degree. And there are 1 million microarcseconds in an arcsecond. Again: The shadow cast by the black hole is tiny. Compared to the full moon, the shadow cast by the M87 black hole is 46.5 million times smaller. Taking a picture of the shadow cast by a supermassive black hole is like taking a photo of a quarter in Los Angeles all the way from Washington, DC.”
[iv] “Astronomers react to the first images of a black hole,” australiascience.tv,April 11, 2019.
[ https://australiascience.tv/astronomers-react-to-the-first-images-of-a-black-hole ]
[v] Marcus Chown, “The M87 image will change our understanding of black holes, but why was the photo so hard to capture?”sciencefocus.com, April 12, 2019.
[ https://www.sciencefocus.com/space/m87-why-the-first-black-hole-photo-was-so-hard-to-capture ]
“The first image revealed is of M87 – Sagittarius A*, because it’s smaller, was circled by matter many times while being observed, yielding a blurrier picture. The image of the black hole in M87, since named Powehi, shows detail smaller than the extent of its event horizon, the point of no return for in-falling light and matter. It is only possible to see such exquisite detail because the intense gravity of each black hole acts like a lens, which makes the image appear five times larger than its horizon.
“The horizon in M87 shows up as a dark “shadow backlit by intense radio waves emitted by matter heated to incandescence as it swirls down through an accretion disk” onto the black holes. The halo around the shadow is brighter on one side than on the other. “This is because the accretion disk is spinning, causing the light from the part coming “towards us to be boosted relative to that from the part that’s receding,” says Feryal Özel (U of Az Tucson).”
[vi] Mary Beth Griggs,”This is how the real photo of a black hole stacks up to artists’ impressions,” theverge.com, April 10, 2019.
“Until recently, the only way to picture a black hole was to imagine what that incredibly dense object might look like or take a look at a talented artist’s interpretation. Now, thanks to a worldwide effort involving hundreds of researchers and eight telescopes spread across five continents, the research community finally has an actual snapshot of a black hole, pictured in silhouette. The image is of the black hole at the center of the galaxy Messier 87, which is around 55 million light-years away from Earth.
“The image is thrilling — if a little fuzzy — but how does it hold up to the meticulously crafted images created by both artists and computers in the BBH (Before Black Hole) era? To be quite honest, it doesn’t really have some of the panache, color, or bright detail as the imagined versions. But it does have a black hole, and really, what more could we want?
“Still, while we wait for more telescopes to come online and more photographs to be taken, it’s fun to take a look at how we’ve envisioned these cosmic phenomena in the past. Enjoy these five classic illustrations while we wait for the next picture to wow us all.”
[vii] “Seachlight,” wikipedia.org, retrieved 5/5/2019.
[ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Searchlight ]
[viii] “Astronomers react to the first images of a black hole,” australiascience.tv,April 11, 2019.
[ https://australiascience.tv/astronomers-react-to-the-first-images-of-a-black-hole ]
“The black hole is located in the centre of the Messier 87 galaxy, approximately 55 million light years away. With a mass of around 6.5 billion Suns packed into the space equivalent to our Solar System, the black hole is far more massive than the one found in the centre of the Milky Way.”
“The worldwide near-decade long experiment is nearly as epic as the prize itself – an impossible picture of a black hole. While we know black holes exist thanks to hearing their collision through gravitational waves we still want this picture and that’s because seeing is believing. The shape of the shadow of the black hole against the bright material around it can test Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity. Just imagine if the picture isn’t what we expect, a new era of astrophysics could be revealed! If the picture is as predicted then Einstein was vindicated in a way he couldn’t conceive of being possible a century ago. As someone who has studied the environments of supermassive black holes, this long-awaited result from the Event Horizon Telescope is extremely exciting. Although we have been able to measure the properties of supermassive black holes before, this is the first time that we have seen a picture of the light from their very edges. By using a telescope the size of the Earth, the team has been able to make an exquisite picture, in unprecedented detail, of the light bent around the edge of the black hole in the middle of a nearby galaxy. This research is particularly important because it has the potential to test Einstein’s theory of gravity to the limits. Today, the Event Horizon Telescope has shown us the invisible. On a truly historic day in the annals of astronomy, the world’s media were treated to a remarkable image. It shows the shadow of the event horizon of a 6 billion solar mass black hole at the centre of the active galaxy M87, clearly defined by a telescope the size of the Earth. Equipped with special data recorders, atomic clocks and sensitive detectors. As well as the equipment working properly, the weather had to be good at all the sites for the experiment to work. In fact, out of a 10-day allocation of telescope time, only seven days of observation were required. The result was five petabytes of data – the equivalent of 5,000 years-worth of MP3 plays – which have now been reduced to an image of a few kilobytes.”
“The feat involved a decade of work by a major international collaboration. Project Director Shep Doeleman paid tribute to the many scientists involved, with special praise for the early-career researcher who carried out much of the drudgery of routine data reduction. Asked whether there was a party once the final image had emerged, Doeleman admitted that the overwhelming emotion was surprise that the image was as expected. National Science Foundation Director, France A. Córdova, who had not seen the image prior to the media conference, confessed that it brought tears to her eyes.”
“The collaboration has also observed the much nearer, but smaller, black hole at the centre of the Milky Way Galaxy known as Sagittarius A*, and data reduction work is continuing on that. There is also the promise of more telescopes being added to the collaboration, together with a move to higher frequencies to improve the resolution.”
“Messier 87,” Wikipedia.org, retrieved 5/5/2019.
[ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messier_87 ]
“It has an active supermassive black hole at its core, which forms the primary component of an active galactic nucleus. The black hole was imaged using data collected in 2017 by the Event Horizon Telescope, with a final, processed image released on 10 April 2019.”
“A Nearby Galaxy Metropolis,” Chandra.si.edu, NASA, retrieved 5/5/2019.
[ http://chandra.si.edu/photo/2008/m87/ ]
“This image is a composite of visible (or optical), radio, and X-ray data of the giant elliptical galaxy, M87. M87 lies at a distance of 60 million light years and is the largest galaxy in the Virgo cluster of galaxies. Bright jets moving at close to the speed of light are seen at all wavelengths coming from the massive black hole at the center of the galaxy. It has also been identified with the strong radio source, Virgo A, and is a powerful source of X-rays as it resides near the center of a hot, X-ray emitting cloud that extends over much of the Virgo cluster. The extended radio emission consists of plumes of fast-moving gas from the jets rising into the X-ray emitting cluster medium.”
[ix] “M87,” astonomy.com, retrieved 5/5/2019.
[ http://www.astronomy.com/-/media/Images/News%20and%20Observing/News/2015/06/M87.jpg ]
[x] “Pluto’s distance from the Sun,” universetoday.com, retrieved 5/5/2019.
[ https://www.universetoday.com/44534/plutos-distance-from-the-sun/ ]
Pluto’s distance from the Sun is 5.9 billion km – the exact number is 5,906,376,272 km. Need that figure in miles? Pluto’s distance from the Sun is 3.67 billion miles.
[xi] “Atacama Large millimeter Array,” wipedia.org, retrieved 5/5/2019.
[ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atacama_Large_Millimeter_Array ]
“The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) is an astronomical interferometer of 66 radio telescopes in the Atacama Desert of northern Chile, which observe electromagnetic radiation at millimeter and submillimeter wavelengths. The array has been constructed on the 5,000 m (16,000 ft) elevation Chajnantor plateau – near the Llano de Chajnantor Observatory and the Atacama Pathfinder Experiment. This location was chosen for its high elevation and low humidity, factors which are crucial to reduce noise and decrease signal attenuation due to Earth’s atmosphere.[1] ALMA is expected to provide insight on star birth during the early Stelliferous era and detailed imaging of local star and planet formation.”
“Event Horizon Telescope,” Wikipedia.org, retrieved 5/5/2019.
[ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Event_Horizon_Telescope ]
Nadia Drake, “First-ever picture of a black hole unveiled,” April 10, 2019.
“More than 50 million light-years away, in the heart of a giant elliptical galaxy called Messier 87, a gargantuan beast is devouring anything that strays too near. Stars, planets, gas, and dust—not even light escapes the monster’s grasp once it crosses a threshold called the event horizon.
“Today, scientists unveiled an image of that object, a supermassive black hole containing the same mass as 6.5 billion suns. Resembling a circular void surrounded by a lopsided ring of light, this landmark image is the world’s first glimpse of a black hole’s silhouette, a picture that creeps right up to the inescapable edge of the black hole’s maw.”
Mary Beth Griggs, “See the first image ever taken of a supermassive black hole,” theverge.com, April 10, 2019
“The black hole in this galaxy has a mass that the Event Horizon Telescope researchers estimate to be 6.5 billion times more massive than our Sun. “M87’s huge black hole mass makes it really a monster, even by supermassive black hole standards,” Sera Markoff, an astrophysicist at the University of Amsterdam, said at a press conference today. “You’re basically looking at a supermassive black hole that’s almost the size of our entire Solar System.”
“A SUPERMASSIVE BLACK HOLE THAT’S ALMOST THE SIZE OF OUR ENTIRE SOLAR SYSTEM”
In addition to being gargantuan, M87’s black hole was intriguing to researchers because of some other unique features. In some earlier pictures of the galaxy, they noticed a massive jet of plasma streaming out from its center.
“Scientists think that the jet is made of material that never quite made it into the event horizon of the black hole. Instead, their observations suggest that the movement of M87’s black hole (which researchers believe is spinning rapidly) accelerates nearby subatomic particles and sends them shooting out into the universe, a beacon to distant astronomers.”
[xii] Dan Robitzski, “A city sized star is blocking the view of our galaxy’s black hole,” futurism.com, retrieved 5/5/2019.
[ https://futurism.com/the-byte/magnetar-blocked-view-galaxys-black-hole ]
“When scientists released the first-ever image of a black hole last week, people immediately began asking why astronomers chose to focus on M87*, a black hole in a distant galaxy, instead of the one in the center of our home Milky Way. For that, we may have to thank a Manhattan-sized, ultra-dense neutron star, also known as a magnetar, that’s blocking the view, according to Live Science.
“It wasn’t until a few days later that an orbital telescope called the Chandra X-Ray Observatory was able to take high-resolution recordings that showed that it was the neutron star, not the black hole, that had sent out the burst.
The magnetar has since faded, and more telescopes are able to see it and the black hole as separate entities. But all the same, the star’s unfortunate timing demonstrates just how dependent our attempts to study the cosmos are on a cooperative universe.”
[xiii] “Sagitarius A*,” Wikipedia.org, retrieved 5/5/2019.
[ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sagittarius_A* ]
[xiv] “S2 (star),” Wikipedia.org, retrieved 5/5/2019.
[ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S2_(star) ]
[xv]
Fraser Cain, “Will our black hole eat the Milky Way?” universetoday.com, August
14, 2016.
[ https://www.universetoday.com/130307/will-black-hole-eat-milky-way/
]
[xvi] “Galactic Center,” wikipedia.org, retrieved 5/5/2019.
[ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galactic_Center ]
“There are around 10 million stars within one parsec of the Galactic Center, dominated by red giants, with a significant population of massive supergiants and Wolf-Rayet stars from a star formation event around one million years ago, and one supermassive black hole of 4.100 ± 0.034 million solar masses at the Galactic Center, which powers the Sagittarius A* radio source.”
Professor Barbara Ryden, “The Center of Our Galaxy,” “Astronomy 162,” ohiostate.edu, retrieved 5/5/2019.
[ http://www.astronomy.ohio-state.edu/~ryden/ast162_7/notes31.html ]
“Infrared light is useful for studying stars near the galactic center. Infrared light of about 2000 nanometers is emitted copiously by cool stars (K and M stars), but is not strongly scattered or absorbed by dust. Within a parsec of the galactic center, the estimated number density of stars is about 10 million stars per cubic parsec. By contrast, the number density of stars in the Sun’s neighborhood is a puny 0.2 star per cubic parsec.
“Because stars are so closely packed together near the galactic center, the night sky for inhabitants there would be spectacular. Near the galactic center, the average distance between neighboring stars would be only 1000 AU (about a light-week). If the Sun were located within a parsec of the galactic center, there would be a million stars in our sky with apparent brightness greater than Sirius. The total starlight in the night sky would be about 200 times greater than the light of the full moon; you could easily read the newspaper at midnight, relying on starlight alone.”
“Galactic Center,” wikipedia.org, retrieved 5/5/2019.
[ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galactic_Center ]
[ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galactic_Center#Supermassive_black_hole ]
“The central cubic parsec around Sagittarius A* contains around 10 million stars.[28] Although most of them are old red giant stars, the Galactic Center is also rich in massive stars. More than 100 OB and Wolf–Rayet stars have been identified there so far.[29] They seem to have all been formed in a single star formation event a few million years ago. The existence of these relatively young stars was a surprise to experts, who expected the tidal forces from the central black hole to prevent their formation. This paradox of youth is even stronger for stars that are on very tight orbits around Sagittarius A*, such as S2 and S0-102. The scenarios invoked to explain this formation involve either star formation in a massive star cluster offset from the Galactic Center that would have migrated to its current location once formed, or star formation within a massive, compact gas accretion disk around the central black-hole. Current evidence favors the latter theory, as formation through a large accretion disk is more likely to lead to the observed discrete edge of the young stellar cluster at roughly 0.5 parsec.[30] Most of these 100 young, massive stars seem to be concentrated within one or two disks, rather than randomly distributed within the central parsec.[31][32] This observation however does not allow definite conclusions to be drawn at this point.”
[xvii] “Proxima Centauri,” Wikipedia.org, retrieved 5/5/2019.
[ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxima_Centauri ]
“Proxima Centauri is a small, low-mass star located about 4.244 light-years (1.301 pc)[9] away from the Sun in the southern constellation of Centaurus.[16] Its Latin name means the “nearest [star] of Centaurus”.[1] This object was discovered in 1915 by Robert Innes and is the nearest-known star to the Sun.[15] With a quiescent apparent magnitude of 11.13,[6] it is too faint to be seen with the naked eye. Proxima Centauri forms a third member of the Alpha Centauri system, being identified as component Alpha Centauri C, and is 2.18° to the southwest of the Alpha Centauri A–B pair.[17] Currently it has a physical separation of about 12,950 AU (1.94 trillion km) from A–B and an orbital period of 550,000 years.[8]”
“Alpha Centauri,” wikipedia.org, retrieved 5/5/2019.
[ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha_Centauri ]
“Alpha Centauri (Latinized from α Centauri, abbreviated Alpha Cen or α Cen) is the closest star system and closest planetary system to the Solar System at 4.37 light-years (1.34 pc) from the Sun. It is a triple star system, consisting of three stars: α Centauri A (officially Rigil Kentaurus),[15] α Centauri B (officially Toliman),[15] and α Centauri C (officially Proxima Centauri).[15]”
[xviii] Joseph Smith, Jr., “The King Follett Sermon,” lds.org, retrieved 5/5/2019.
[ https://www.lds.org/study/ensign/1971/04/the-king-follett-sermon?lang=eng ]
[xix] “If you could hie to kolob—lyrics,” lds.org, March 14, 2004.
[ https://www.timesandseasons.org/harchive/2004/03/if-you-could-hie-to-kolob-lyrics/ ]
If You Could Hie to Kolob, 284 – William W. Phelps
1. If you could hie to Kolob In the twinkling of an eye,
And then continue onward With that same speed to fly,
Do you think that you could ever, Through all eternity,
Find out the generation Where Gods began to be?
2. Or see the grand beginning, Where space did not extend?
Or view the last creation, Where Gods and matter end?
Me thinks the Spirit whispers, “No man has found ‘pure space,’
Nor seen the outside curtains, Where nothing has a place.”
3. The works of God continue, And worlds and lives abound;
Improvement and progression Have one eternal round.
There is no end to matter; There is no end to space;
There is no end to spirit; There is no end to race.
4. There is no end to virtue; There is no end to might;
There is no end to wisdom; There is no end to light.
There is no end to union; There is no end to youth;
There is no end to priesthood; There is no end to truth.
5. There is no end to glory; There is no end to love;
There is no end to being; There is no death above.
There is no end to glory; There is no end to love;
There is no end to being; There is no death above.
Cary HolmquistMay 10, 2019
And so, it boggles my puny mind, considering these concepts that are universal in nature. To consider further that the God of this universe bothers with us puny mortals and all our minuscule experiences...well that boggles the mind also. Why should we be any part of His attention. And yet He has told us that we are His children and so are of paramount importance to Him and He constantly blesses us with so much. Our gratitude for this probably seems so minute in comparison to what it should be. This is just the beginning of a discussion of galactic proportions....