The Monster in NGC6357

NGC6357 is the Lobster Nebula and I don't care why when you would have to be nuts to go near it with your claw crackers.

You can see that big yellow eye in his head while his whole body is seething, so much so that he spits huge white fireballs at you.  It should be obvious this is a seriously dangerous entity.


Note:  the contrast from the original NASA image was increased substantially plus reds were filtered slightly to subdue them.  That's really no capital crime since it's a lower tech way of doing the same things NASA does.  It's not just that they look for light in the sky but which light when they limit it to certain frequencies.

In the absence of a better number, say it's one hundred light years from one side of the nebula to the other.  A light year is six trillion miles so it's six hundred trillion miles from top to bottom.

But Terra will be the Dominator, won't it, mates.  Humans will go forth into the entire Universe.

Does anyone think much about how long that would take.  The time isn't just the lament about, gee whiz, interstellar travel takes such a long time since an even bigger problem is, gee whiz, whatta lotta stars.  The sci fi novels usually have humanity well-situated in its spread about the Universe in a couple of thousand years but, even with ships faster than we can possibly imagine, it would take endless time to visit all those stars, much less colonize them to form interstellar trading associations.

Likely the problem with engaging in interstellar space wars won't be so much due to running into other civilizations but rather finding them.

That thinking may sound oddly depressed but it's just the consideration of Really Huge Things.  Depressing is if I allocate one day to visit one star then how long in years is six hundred trillion days. Figuring that out is depressing but the vista isn't.

Ed:  is the pitch that the Universe is too big for humanity to fill it?

Not quite since the thinking is it's too big for anything to fill it.

Ed:  you have been flying too close to that Lobster Nebula!

Perhaps so but the closer I get, the more I realize I'm not even dust inside it.

Ed:  oh, right.  Tell me you're not depressed!

I'm not.  Think of it from flying about in your gee whiz galactic cruiser and you behold the magnificence of this Lobster Nebula through your windows.  You turn to your gorgeous co-pilot and say to her, "What say we go down there and throw snow balls at them, huh?"