That Was The First Thing I Thought About As Well, But Unfortunately I Realized That's Just Not Possible.

That was the first thing I thought about as well, but unfortunately I realized that's just not possible. For one thing, the oldest of these stars only formed about 40 million years ago, and it took a few hundred million years for Earth to form and cool enough to host life.

More to the point, though: none of those stars can host planets because there isn't enough planet-stuff around. See, most of intergalactic matter is hydrogen and helium. The intergalactic void simply does not have the same amount of heavier elements you find in galactic environments, because there hasn't been a long chain of prior stellar death to form them out there. However, that also means that this stellar strand is likely composed of some of the purest-fusing stars the universe has seen for eons.

Putting that all aside, if we imagine ourselves on an impossible world in this cosmic wake, the night sky would look very strange. Most of the heavens would be very dark, flecked with a handful of stars. However, there would be two opposing splotches of bright accumulated starlight, gradually fading outwards. How alien would that be to us, with our Milky Way?

Fresh news from Hubble, and it's a real doozy this time: it found a runaway supermassive black hole.

Let me repeat that:

A runaway SUPERMASSIVE BLACK HOLE.

Half the universe away, an immense object born of concentrated primordial chaos, so powerful it once bound an entire galaxy together, hurtles through the intergalactic void. Its flight through the cosmos so unfathomably violent that it leaves a stream of newborn stars two hundred thousand lightyears long whirling in its wake. Gas and dust in the space between galaxies is spread so thin a particle might never touch another for a million years, and yet this escaped galactic core has dragged the matter in its path into fusion.

What a universe we live in!

I made this shirt for a friend last year after discussing this exact factoid;

TIL astronaut Jack Schmidt discovered he was allergic to moon dust, which is a thing millions of other people have probably gone their whole lives never knowing.

mentally i am here

oblivion is an abysmal game and everyone should play it

Fresh news from Hubble, and it's a real doozy this time: it found a runaway supermassive black hole.

Let me repeat that:

A runaway SUPERMASSIVE BLACK HOLE.

Half the universe away, an immense object born of concentrated primordial chaos, so powerful it once bound an entire galaxy together, hurtles through the intergalactic void. Its flight through the cosmos so unfathomably violent that it leaves a stream of newborn stars two hundred thousand lightyears long whirling in its wake. Gas and dust in the space between galaxies is spread so thin a particle might never touch another for a million years, and yet this escaped galactic core has dragged the matter in its path into fusion.

What a universe we live in!

Cunk on Earth | Philomena's Castle