Strange News From Other Stars

No good comes from a black hole. Or so I believed. One only has to bring to mind government borrowing requirements or Disney's ill-conceived eponymous 1979 blockbuster. Not even an infinitesimal pin-prick of light can escape from their Stygian depths. They mark the cold end of things. To borrow T.S. Eliot's subtly menacing lines from 'East Coker', 'O dark, dark, dark. They all go into the dark. / The vacant interstellar places, the vacant into the vacant'. So the news scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics have proved that a black hole approximately four million times the size of our own sun lies at the centre of our galaxy, was pause for thought. It had long been theorised so, but now it is fact. The sheer scale, even in typically massive astronomical terms, is impressive. And yet, in a self-revealing glass half-empty way, I was seeing the implications for the Milky Way: the eventual cannibalism of any nearby matter as it is drawn in by the terrific forces of gravity. Which was plainly silly. I mean, that would take trillions of years to happen. Long after our sun had consumed the Earth in nuclear fire. Long beyond the life-span of the human race. Or even what the human race becomes. As Robert Frost sensibly proclaims on the matter, I say 'They cannot scare me with their empty spaces'.

My own intimations of mortality and fondness for our stellar backyard momentarily obscured the wonder of the news. Far from being merely agents of destruction, this research (along with a study on early galaxy formation by Durham, Cardiff and Caltech scientists) suggests black holes were integral to the formation of stars and galaxies by allowing high density environments
where atoms could gain substance. Thus from them flowed smoked salmon, the Renaissance, weeping willows, Groucho Marx and Tuesdays. At this time of year, where season and myth collide in a mish-mash of consumerism and festival, this is the really glorious news for all of us to celebrate and marvel at. Demonstrably, as Joni Mitchell sang, 'We are stardust / We are golden'.