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Good evening, everyone:

So, I’m not sure what one could possibly write about the news-flash/distraction-gesture/constitutionally-abhorrent-announcement of the day: President Trump’s intention to “take over” the District of Columbia by federalizing the DC police department and deploying the national guard to combat crime and homelessness. I wouldn’t want to rush to judgment.

In the meantime . . . . I should know better than to start writing notes about the cosmos again. You may recall a note a couple of weeks back about whether the universe has a boundary -- the gist was that it does not. But now, another astronomical wrinkle has surfaced: researchers have evidently articulated a theory that Earth and the Milky Way galaxy of which we’re a part may be floating along in a “bubble”-like sub-section of space surrounded by denser material.  Kind of like the Tupperware Shape-O toy, but with the stars still inside:

I didn’t know what to think about that – Bad thing? Good thing? Unusual thing? But Live Science media went on to quote the astronomer Indranil Banik as observing: "Our Galaxy is close to the centre of a large, local void, causing matter to be pulled by gravity towards the higher density exterior of the void, leading to the void becoming emptier with time."

Say what? For heaven’s sake, life is confusing enough - the rise of authoritarianism, cruel and endless wars, TikTok influencers, the Detroit Tigers on a losing streak. I’m not sure we really need this particular obfuscation of what we thought was going on in the cosmos.

But, if we’re committed to pursuing curiosity and clarity – as I know we all are – we carry on.  My understanding would be that we're being carried farther and farther away from our neighbors (the the-universe-has-no-boundaries argument), but traveling in a protective cocoon-like-casing that is evidently filled with stuff that is mushier than what's outside (unlike Shape-O, evidently). I guess I can live with that.

Or I thought I could, until our pesky friends at Live Science added: "[The observations accordingly indicate] that our galaxy may be in the center of a region known as the local hole."

Now, that's just insulting. I refuse to acknowledge that we are located in any such thing.

But wait, it gets worse. Turns out that the calculations are based on twenty years of observations of baryon acoustic oscillations (BAOs). Stop right there. It’s one thing to be told you’re stuck in a local hole. It’s quite another to be told that by something called a BAO.

My cosmologist experts conclude: "The implications would be vast — not just for our understanding of how the universe behaves but for our own place in it." Maybe. But at least for now, I'm not letting a bunch of BAOs lecture me about my place in the universe. They can come back after the 2026 midterms - maybe by then things will be clearer.

Rip

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