Archive for Astronomy

Slum it?

We now bide on the outer edges of the big pin wheel. But did we come from inner parts? Were we flung out of town by a flail, an arm, a slide, of stars?

This may seem like idle spec – how could we ever know if, over the 22 or so rings round the big whirl in the sky that our sun and chums may have made since the earth was born, we have been moved out from its midst as well as round it? The earth has had bags of time to wipe out any such signs – many, many times over. But the moon, on the other hand, has been quite samey over all that time. It’s got no land drift, no snow, wind, fire or ice to wear stuff down – only the thump by the odd space rock. So it may hold a long note of the sun’s and its kids’ many turns round the thing we see as the milky way (and we don’t mean the snack), now going round at about once every 200 mega years.

That’s still way too long ago for any early human to have seen more stuff in the sky than now. Not even tiny vole like chaps were out and about back then. But t-rex and chums may have gazed upon a night more dense with stars, on the other side of the sky, 100 mega years ago.

If we go back to the moon and dig a bit, we may find signs of stuff found only in the hot busy core – and then we’d know. The mere fact that we could know means it’s not an idle idea. But it looks like we’d have to go some place else than stay here on earth.