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The Sombrero Galaxy in infrared, photo by NASA

(This floating ring is the size of a galaxy. In fact, it is part of the photogenic Sombrero Galaxy, one of the largest galaxies in the nearby Virgo Cluster of Galaxies. The dark band of dust that obscures the mid-section of the Sombrero Galaxy in optical light actually glows brightly in infrared light. The above image shows the infrared glow, recently recorded by the orbiting Spitzer Space Telescope, superposed in false-color on an existing image taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope in optical light. The Sombrero Galaxy, also known as M104, spans about 50,000 light years across and lies 28 million light years away. M104 can be seen with a small telescope in the direction of the constellation of Virgo.)

BECOMING THE UNBECOMING: Mental Floss, A "What If "

6/5/05

Inspired by Jed Mckenna , NASA , Peter Wasilewski and his Frision Art

What if I awoke this morning and I found myself unexpectedly floating in outer space?

Perhaps I would find myself approaching The Sombrero Galaxy.

Would I take it easy?

Would I freak out?

Would I doubt or flail about?

Or as I was gazing

would I say,

"Wow, this is amazing!?!"

Would I feel lazy?

Go crazy?

Or could it be an epithany?

Deep Impact Spacecraft Hurtles Toward Comet

(What happens when you crash into a comet? That was a question considered by astronomers when they designed the Deep Impact mission, launched in January. This coming July 4, the Deep Impact spaceship will reach its target - Comet Tempel 1 -- and release an impactor over five times the mass of a person toward its surface. The mothership will photograph the result. The remaining crater may tell how Tempel 1 is constructed. If, for example, Comet Tempel 1 is an extremely loose pile of debris, the impactor may leave little or no discernable crater. On the other hand, if the comet's surface is relatively firm, the impactor's ripple may leave quite a large crater. A contest is even being held to predict the size of the resulting crater. Pictured above is an artist's impression of the initial encounter between the spacecraft and the comet.)

What if I awoke from an afternoon nap and found myself flying through space?

Maybe I'd find myself in a spacecraft hurtling toward a comet.

Would I vomit?

Screw up my face?

Would I in fact

brace for impact?

Would I sing Amazing Grace?

Maybe I'd be saying mantras

and prayers!

Or would I say, "Who cares,"

as I sat back in my chair?

Could I simply sit

and let the spacecraft hit?

Would I enjoy it?

Maybe I'd have a fit.

What if I left my movie seat

and discovered I had become very tiny,

floating in a miniscule microscopic space?

Perhaps I would find myself face to face with a huge atom.

Would that be neat?

Could I fathom

what it was?

Would I think I was in outer space?

Would I become a nut case?

Would I recognize this place?

Maybe I would think the atom was a planet.

The electrons, protons and neutrons

might actually seem

like Saturn's rings

or the moons of Jupiter.

If I didn't plan it,

would I get upset?

Would I feel smarter or stupider?

Maybe I'd think I was seeing things.

Would it matter

if matter

were waves or particles?

Would I sit down to read some articles?

When the movie was over

Would I feel drunk or sober?

Would I still try to race

everyone to the restroom?

Would I feel this was my doom?

Would I want more popcorn?

Or toot my own horn?

Would I feel cold or hot?

Would I remember the movie

or analyze the plot?

The Dust and Ion Tails of Comet Hale-Bopp

(In 1997, Comet Hale-Bopp's intrinsic brightness exceeded any comet since 1811. Since it peaked on the other side of the Earth's orbit, however, the comet appeared only brighter than any comet in two decades. Visible above are the two tails shed by Comet Hale-Bopp. The blue ion tail is composed of ionized gas molecules, of which carbon monoxide particularly glows blue when reacquiring electrons. This tail is created by the particles from the fast solar wind interacting with gas from the comet's head. The blue ion tail points directly away from the Sun. The light colored dust tail is created by bits of grit that have come off the comet's nucleus and are being pushed away by the pressure of light from the Sun. This tail points nearly away from the Sun. The above photograph was taken in March 1997.)

What if when I turned on the TV,

I learned that Comet Hale-Bopp was racing towrds me?

Would it's dust and ion tails

cause me to chew my nails?

Would I still feel free and easy?

Would I run for cover?

What if it continued to hover

a few million miles from me

indefinitely?

And I knew it was still coming?

At any moment.

Would I become my unbecoming?

Would I wish I had lived differently?

Could I still have fun?

Would I be outdoors sunning?

Would I try running?

Would I care?

Or style my hair?

Frizion Illume

(This picture of thin layers of forming ice crystals uses a scientific understanding of light's wave properties solely for artistic purposes. Titled "Illume", the picture was created by astrophysicist Peter Wasilewski. To make the picture, the crystals were illuminated by light shining through a polarizing filter -- a filter that restricts the otherwise randomly oriented light waves to vibrate in only one direction. While passing through the ice, different colors of the polarized light are then refracted and reflected along slightly different paths by the delicate crystalline layers. Viewing the scene with a second polarizing filter brings out the wondrous display of structure and color. Painting with "light, the laws of physics, and an attitude" Wasilewski has created a series of these evocative ice images that he refers to as Frozen Vision or Frizion.)

What if I read a book, then took a look around

and found

the whole world had turned to ice?

Would I think this was nice?

Would I look twice?

Would the delicate crystalline layers

become ego slayers?

What if my world was suddenly seen

through a polarized light filter?

Would I turn mean?

Would I cop an attitude?

Would I be kind or rude?

If I saw the world through this kind of fancy filter

would I wonder who built her?

Or might I brood

as my feet slid around,

finding no more ground?

Would I fall and complain?

Or would I decide to wear ice skates,

shout "Yahoo!"

and want to do this again?

I wonder just what would I do?

What would you?

The Saggitarius Dwarf Tidal Stream

(Is our Milky Way Galaxy out to lunch? Recent wide field images and analyses now indicate that our home galaxy is actually still in the process of devouring one of its closer satellite neighbors. This unfortunate neighbor, the Sagittarius Dwarf galaxy, is now seen to be part of a larger Sagittarius Tidal Stream, a loose filament of stars, gas, and possibly dark matter that entangles the Milky Way. An artist's depiction of the stream is shown above. Speculation also holds that the Sagittarius Dwarf was once pulled through the Milky Way disk very close to our Sun's current location. An important resulting realization is that galaxies contain a jumble of clumps and filaments of both dim and dark matter.)

What if I awoke this morning and found myself unexpectedly floating in space?

Perhaps I would find myself approaching The Saggiatrius Dwarf Tidal Stream.

Would I scream?

Would I think this was a dream?

Would I still want a cup of coffee?

Would my thoughts be lofty?

Would I still want breakfast?

Or would that be the last

thing on my mind?

White Dwarf Star Spiral

(About 1,600 light-years away, in a binary star system fondly known as J0806, two dense white dwarf stars orbit each other once every 321 seconds. Interpreting x-ray data from the Chandra Observatory astronomers argue that the stars' already impressively short orbital period is steadily getting shorter as the stars spiral closer together. Even though they are separated by about 80,000 kilometers (the Earth-Moon distance is 400,000 kilometers) the two stars are therefore destined to merge. Depicted in this artist's vision, the death spiral of the remarkable J0806 system is a consequence of Einstein's theory of General Relativity that predicts the white dwarf stars will lose their orbital energy by generating gravity waves. In fact, J0806 could be one of the brightest sources of gravitational waves in our galaxy, directly detectable by future space-based gravity wave instruments. )

What if I awoke from a dream to find myself spinning in space?

Perhaps I'd be approaching The White Dwarf Star Spiral.

Perhaps I would think this was my final

"Hoorah."

Maybe I would say, "Ooo," or "Aah."

Or I might have an "Aha!"

Perhaps I would say, "Hey! What a great day!"

as I enjoyed a huge spin,

wearing a grin,

going within.

Would I feel entranced?

Or wet my pants?

Would I spend today dreaming of yesterday?

Would I feel sorrow

or worry about tomorrow?

When Galaxies Overlap

(NGC 3314 consists of two large spiral galaxies which just happen to almost exactly line-up. The foreground spiral is viewed nearly face-on, its pinwheel shape defined by young bright star clusters. But against the glow of the background galaxy, dark swirling lanes of interstellar dust are also seen to echo the face-on spiral's structure. The dust lanes are surprisingly pervasive, and this remarkable pair of overlapping galaxies is one of a small number of systems in which absorption of visible light can be used to directly explore the distribution of dust in distant spirals. NGC 3314 is about 140 million light-years away in the multi-headed constellation Hydra. This color composite was constructed from Hubble Space Telescope images made in 1999 and 2000.)

What if I read on the internet that worlds were ready to collide?

Would I make a bet? Could I decide?

Would I stay inside?

Or go outdoors to watch?

Would this botch

my plans?

If I found galazies were overlapping,

would I curl up and start napping?

Or would I feel Really Wide Awake?

What if the earth did shake?

Would there be a planetquake?

Could I bake a cake?