Just a short tutorial on how YOU TOO can do multiwavelength astronomy.
Up until very recently all the science textbooks have built a story about a universe only seen through the very narrow slit of our eyes. Our eyes see one octave of frequencies. Can you imagine claiming to know anything about Mozart’s requiem mass if you could only hear one octave out of the entire range of tones? It is laughable. Some brave audio explorer would develop a way of hearing the next octave lower, and everything we knew about Mozart’s requiem would need to be re-thought.
When combining astronomy images from different frequencies, I experience a bit of vertigo, in the sense that the images show two entirely different creatures. Our Sun is a perfect example. Visible light
Now seen in XRay
Now seen in just one wavelength, as given off by the Hydrogen atom during one particular energetic transition.
Now seen during an eclipse
We could go on, adding different wavelengths. A decent analogy is that we are looking at a body, one time at the muscles, another time at the blood vessels, another time at the water content. They all interpenetrate one another, and they are all distinct. Blood vessels must penetrate to every part of the body, and blood vessels must remain separate from every other part of the body.
Our Sun is just as complex as our bodies. Our bodies are just as complex as a cell. A cell is just as complex as a galaxy. The design of a living creature is always the same, in the sense that the blueprint would look the same to someone who knew what was going on. The outlines of this universal blueprint have been known and forgotten many times over the millennia. Key to our souls now is the aspect of this blueprint that lays out how a living creature can transcend its current nature. Nature on Earth has worked this out many times, one of the most beautiful being the transition from caterpillar to butterfly. The caterpillar has a whole section of its DNA that is there only to be used if the transition to butterfly is won. We as humans have equally astounding transitions possible for us. But some of those new possibilities will not be visible to our usual eyes. A saint is someone who has actual, physical, “appendages” or “organs” that you and I do not yet. If we could bring the right kind of telescope up to St Claire, or Padre Pio, we would see growth of the soul not present in you and me. Previous eras knew this, could somehow “see” it. We moderns have lost that ability, we no longer understand HOW some people in previous eras could literally see the difference between a saint and an ordinary shmuck. Since we do not know the technique, we dismiss all that as silly. Imagine 1200 years from now people dismissing the XRay images of the Sun simply because the knowledge of satellites and XRay sensors was lost.
What efforts does the caterpillar need to make in that chrysalis - we might never know. What kind of efforts does a person need to make to grow their soul - this we have instructions for scattered through all places and times. This growth is desperately needed now. We can hardly imagine how many troubles and sufferings on Earth are a result of this growth not happening in a sufficient number of people.
If not enough flying insects make the transition from their larva form, then flowers do not get pollenated, and think of all the ramifications from that. Yet I would bet the caterpillar does not comprehend the flower. The caterpillar only knows leaves. Maybe the caterpillars tell stories about this “other world”, yet the other world is exactly the same world which the caterpillar lives in, it is only the caterpillar that needs to change.
Thanks Michael. Where some see only probability and random events, others see order and harmony. The interconectedness of life at all levels is often shunned by materialists that see all as result of a very fortunate mere chance. I usually say I don’t believe in God, but that I know him, through the signature left in his work. Perhaps my conception of God is not religious, but one as seeing him as the field from which, through certain subtle but clearly identifiable order, everything arises and expresses in all what we can see and sense, through all what we can’t see and measure. His only command seems to claim: Be!
Jonathan Pageau talks a LOT about how everything is a fractal. I think you’re demonstrating much the same thing. Thank you!