The Mind-Boggling Story of the Galactic Wonder That Didn’t Exist When We Saw It

[n2doc]

In 1995, the world was astonished by the image of a group of 4-light-year-tall columns located in the Eagle Nebula, 7,000 light years from here. So unimaginable it was that someone called them the Pillars of Creation.

The only problem is that the pillars didn't really exist. Something had destroyed them more than a thousand years ago.

It's a natural thought. Limited by our understanding of time, we look at objects in space as if they were mountains or the ocean. We genuinely perceive these stellar landscapes as something that is up there fixed, secure, rooted in our reality, the solid foundation of our existence. Some people see the work of gods in all this seemingly immutable show, hence the fantastic name they got. Others just see a cosmic movie set for our humanity's drama.

But our diminutive perception of time, the same that makes us think we are the center of everything, is just an illusion. At the cosmic scale, just like in our individual lives, things move constantly. The architecture of the cosmos is ever changing and scientists know—since 2007, only a few years after they were observed—that these gargantuan structures don't exist anymore.

They were destroyed, blasted by a supernova that happened 6,000 years ago. With our telescopes, we can see the supernova advancing, unstoppable, destroying everything it touches. From that same vantage point, the shockwave has not reached the Pillars of Creation yet. For our senses, they are still there.

more

http://gizmodo.com/5884206/the-pillars-of-creation-were-actually-destroyed-before-we-discovered-them

[xchrom]

1. i remember when they first published those photos. t

[mdmc]

2. wild

[patrice]

3. What other realities are unavailable to our senses yet? nt

[barbtries]

4. what other unrealities

can we perceive?

[bvar22]

6. There is the possibility that there are an infinite number ...

..of ways to perceive the Universe,
and we, as Humans, are limited to just 5.

That makes the task a little more daunting.

[Vincardog]

5. beautiful and fascinating

[Lint Head]

7. This is my cell phone wall paper.

What is really mind boggling is the premise that a person traveling to a destination in space maybe lost because the place they are going is so far away it is not there when they arrive.

[Odin2005]

8. I feel really tiny, now.

[HopeHoops]

9. And here I thought I was just stoned.

[RobertSeattle]

10. If you think about it, everything we see if in the past

Even someone 2 feet from you - you are seeing them as there were a 0.000000002036 of a second ago.
.

[Lochloosa]

11. Sorry. I blinked.

[muriel_volestrangler]

12. There's a slight mistake in that, I think - the supernova happened over 7,000 years ago

not '6,000 years ago', as the gizmodo writer claims. We can already see the after-effects of the supernova - the shockwave - in the region close to the Pillars - ie about 7,000 light years away. So the supernova was more than 7,000 years ago.

As this story from 2007 says, the shockwave is behind the Pillars; the supernova happened more than 7,000 years ago, its shockwave was travelling (slower than the speed of light) towards the pillars, and the pictures we see now are the state about 7,000 years ago - perhaps it's half way there. They reckon in another 1,000 years, we'll see pictures of the wave destroying the Pillars. That destruction happened 6,000 years ago; the supernova itself happened perhaps 8,000 years ago, ie observed on earth maybe 1,000 years ago. As this article says:

"There is not enough radiation coming from the stars to heat the dust up to the temperature we have measured," Flagey explains. Only the explosion of a young, massive star within the cluster can account for the hot shell of dust Spitzer detects. He estimates the explosion may have been visible from Earth between 1,000 and 2,000 years ago. "There are two or three observations in Chinese records that may be candidates for this supernova."

http://www.astronomy.com/en/News-Observing/News/2007/01/M16%20scorched%20by%20supernova.aspx