The Hand of GOD?

 

 

 

  

  

  

Cosmic Hand

Reaches For

The Light

SPACE.COM

April 4th, 2009

Tiny and dying but still-powerful 

stars called pulsars spin like 

crazy and light up 

their surroundings, 

often with ghostly glows. 

So it is with PSR B1509-58, 

which long ago collapsed 

into a sphere just 12 miles 

in diameter after running 

out of fuel.

And what a strange 

scene this one has created.

In a new image from NASA’s 

Chandra X-ray Observatory, 

high-energy X-rays emanating from the nebula around PSR B1509-58 have been colored blue to reveal a structure resembling a hand reaching for some eternal red cosmic light.

The star now spins around at the dizzying pace of seven times every second — 

as pulsars do — 

spewing energy into space that creates the scene.

Strong magnetic fields, 

15 trillion times stronger than the Earth’s magnetic field, 

are thought to be involved, too. 

The combination drives an energetic wind of electrons and ions away from the dying star. 

As the electrons move through the magnetized nebula, 

they radiate away their energy as X-rays.

The red light actually a neighboring gas cloud, RCW 89, 

energized into glowing by the fingers of the PSR B1509-58 nebula, 

astronomers believe.

 

The scene, 

which spans 150 light-years, 

is about 17,000 light years 

away,

so what we see now is 

how it actually looked 

17,000 years ago, 

and that light is 

just arriving here.

 

A light-year is the 

distance light travels 

in a year, 

about 6 trillion miles 

(10 trillion kilometers).

.

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