The New Pulsing Star (The Pulsing Star Revised)

For the Millions of Pulsing Stars

Once upon a time, in a galaxy far far away, when the universe was much wilder and younger, there lived a pulsar. The pulsar lived in its own little corner of the universe and was completely alone. Now, when I say “lived in its own little corner of the universe” I do not mean that the pulsar was literally in a corner of the universe. Science has shown us that the universe actually has no corners, but simply goes on and on and on until you get back to where you started. And no, it is not round like the earth. It is actually four-dimensional. To put it simply, it is completely beyond our current understanding. In fact, modern astronomical science is completely beyond the grasp of humans. We may discover certain facts, but these facts are far too outlandish for us to wrap our minds around. Some stars are so enormous that our sun could fit into them seven billion times. …Now can you really picture that? I know I can’t. So why do we bother learning the facts?

This story is desperate to tell itself, yet if I am to continue writing it (and you continue reading it) we need to establish that humankind will never comprehend everything about how things work. To try would be to judge the personality of a Great Blue Whale by examining one of his hairs. We will never be able to predict anything with complete accuracy. Heavenly bodies are so diverse in their nature: we will never be able to explain why they act certain ways, or why they orbit here instead of there. We will never know to what extent the bodies we can’t see are influencing the ones we can see. And we will never be able to compare the two and arrive at a nice, reasonable conclusion. But we try is because it’s human nature to hope to understand what we don’t. At least that is my guess. And my guess is as good as yours.

Pulsars are tiny stars made entirely of neutrons. Their name comes from the fact that some of them send radio waves out into space, like a lone lighthouse to the sea. The pulsar in our story, like all pulsars, was born when gas from a supernova came together and started to shift, combine, and condense to create a new form. Our particular pulsar was average: it weighed as much as the sun and was about nine and a half kilometers wide. As one can imagine, a body so heavy yet so small would be unimaginably dense. In fact, I believe pulsars might be the densest heavenly bodies in the universe (but that’s just my personal opinion).

Something as heavy as a pulsar attracts other bodies. Our scientists attribute this to gravity, which is one of their few laws that actually seems to exist with no exceptions. Gravity proposes that the more mass a body has, the more other bodies are drawn towards it. And so pulsars should naturally have other heavenly bodies orbiting around them: and here is where the scientist encounters his problem. For some reason we cannot comprehend, many pulsars do not. Many pulsars are completely alone in the universe. Why they remain solitary with so many bodies floating around in the sky remains a mystery to us. But just because we don’t know why it happens doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen.

Our particular pulsar was one of these mysterious ones with no companions. It lived completely alone in its own little “corner” of the universe. And yet even this pulsar, who lived billions of light-years away from earth, was able to have been reached by our ever-probing curiosity. Our pulsar was discovered in 1982 by a man named Shrinivas Kulkarni. Shrinivas was a jack-of-all-trades when it came to astronomy. He had already discovered the “Brown Dwarfs” by the time he picked out our little pulsar from the rest of the sky. He dubbed it a “millisecond pulsar” because of the frantic pace at which it sent out its signals. And so, our pulsar became the very first of the millisecond pulsars, and was given the name PSR B1937+21. Shrinivas moved on and continued his successful work as an astronomer. In 2001 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, London, being one of only ten living Indians to receive this honor. He has now retired, and is a proud and well-liked man.

Since Shrinivas, millisecond pulsars have attracted many astronomers. Scientists make new observations on these abnormally fast pulsars every day. In fact, in 2005 our scientists unveiled PSR J1748-2446ad, a pulsar with the fastest spinning time yet recorded: 716 times per second. One Mississippi. That was one second. The pulsar just did 716 spins. Just why this pulsar goes so fast (and how long it can keep it up) is beyond our comprehension. But we do not mind: it feels good to have discovered such an abnormal heavenly body, and to announce its existence to the world so that all may scrutinize it in the night sky.

But that pulsar is not the focus of our story. Our pulsar, now known as PSR B1937+21, currently spins 614 times per second. I have said before that some pulsars send out radio signals into the vastness of the cosmos. Not all pulsars do this: our scientists have found many pulsars that are content to simply be; they don’t need to use radio waves to get by. But most pulsars, according to experts, do send out these signals. The first pulsar man discovered was located because of the signals it sent out, and so it was also with our own pulsar, who is far too distant and small to be seen by us here on earth. Though all the signals are typically radio waves, each pulsar produces its own signals a bit differently. We do not fully comprehend the nature of pulsar’s waves, or how they’re produced. But we have been able to lump pulsars into a few broad categories depending on some of the basic features their waves have. Our pulsar’s waves are fueled by the continual decaying of its inner magnetic core.

We do not know how long it takes PSR B1937+21’s waves to reach us, but we assume that by the time we can sense them they’re long in the past. As far as we know, PSR B1937+21 is still out there in its little “corner” of the universe, sending out signals all around itself at 614 times per second away into the emptiness of space.


Don Backer was thirty-nine and had no wife or children. He lived alone in his Californian house, although he was seldom there. He spent most of his hours (and all of his days) in the observatory where he worked. If you saw him on the street you would see a small man with disheveled brown hair and yellow teeth. Perhaps most noticeable would be his terrible posture.

However, the chances of anyone seeing Don outside slid downwards with each sunset. Every time he walked down the dirty streets children would laugh at him, s would walk past briskly or refuse to look at him, and teenagers would shout things that he couldn’t make out or didn’t understand. And so every time Don went out he was less inclined to ever go out again. And so as the years passed, so did Don gradually pass out of society. And Don stayed only in the observatory and his house.

Yet in 1982, even his house would fade away in the climax of Don’s work. Don had been putting all his time into his most recent discovery: signals from space that resembled a pulsar’s but were far too rapid to be from one. By now Don constantly dwelt within the observatory. Long after the other astronomers had cast away their instruments and had gone out to meet the evening, one could still find Don working away at his project in the dark laboratory. He would go from his machines to his desk to his instruments with only the meager light from his lamp to guide him.

Tonight Don Backer would finally be able to prove that the rapid signals came from an undiscovered type of pulsar. And yet for some reason he could not summon the excitement that was supposed to come naturally with new discoveries. Don sat at his desk, but instead of writing he paused, and started thinking. Stopping to think was a bad habit Don had been trying to overcome, but oftentimes his thoughts would overwhelm him. Why did he not feel any excitement? Where was his sense of accomplishment…? Don felt empty, and that frightened him because if he was empty, then that meant he had no purpose. Don quickly snapped out of it, however, and started to write down reasons why he might feel the way he did. After a few minutes, he came to the reasonable conclusion that it was lack of sleep.

“Well, I suppose the best option now would be to journey home and rest.”

Don sat in the dark room with only the hum of his machines acknowledging his decision. It would have been easy to put up his papers, turn off the light, and step out of the laboratory. But Don did not journey out into the brisk air of that night. Instead, Don went back to his machines, his pale hands quickly adjusting knobs and measurements in the darkness. After all, he was almost done with his project, and he wanted his notes to be so detailed that even Shrinivas couldn’t revise them.

The Fall of General Carver

General E. Carver tried not to look down. He certainly would have liked to hold his head high, to take each step with confidence and determination. But the space station had taken serious damage; there was rubble everywhere. New pieces of wall and splintered furniture came into view with every flash of the red panic lights. He had to look down to make sure he didn’t trip and fall.

The sound was deafening: screams, shouts, crashes, and even the occasional explosion. …But mostly gunshots.

His enemy didn’t stand a chance.

His enemy was the ex-general Joseph Brown. His underground allies were shipping him off to the facilities on Mars, where he could regroup and rally support. The people loved him, and even from Mars he could probably amass a powerful army. The Martians certainly supported him.

It was all very disgusting, Carver thought, that this would be the fate of the ex-general. Killed like a dog running away from home. Still, Carver comforted himself that he would give some last honor to the old man. Carver was not one to shoot his enemy in the back. He was much nobler than that. He would give the old man one last stand, a fair fight, a duel, before he sent him to the grave.

Carver looked up just in time to save himself from hitting a wall. A white door inches from his face was marked “Shuttle”. So this was it. Carver looked at his golden watch. 11:17, five minutes since the attack began. He was right on schedule. Carver took out his silver pistol, and with gun in hand flung open the door and stepped through.

The sounds instantly muffled as soon as the door closed behind him. The room was a pentagon, with the pointed top at his right. The wall to his left was lined with lockers, most of them empty except for the occasional jacket or pair of shoes. There were cardboard boxes of all sizes strewn throughout the entire room. The point to his right, obviously the focus of the room, was an archway reaching all the way to the ceiling. Intense light came from the other side, along with drifting vapor, like fog. It was like the gateway to Heaven.

And there in the middle of the room, holding one of the boxes, was the old man.

“Joseph Brown,” said General Carver, pointing his gun at the man’s heart.

“Glad you could make it, son,” Brown said with searing sarcasm. He put the box down beside him.

“I’m not your son anymore,” Carver sneered, “Right before I came here I changed my name to Elliot Patton Carver.”

Joseph Brown laughed harshly. “You think a name will take away what’s in your blood?” He laughed again, hiding the aching pain he felt. His only son hated him. No matter how many victories in life he had won, he was still a failure at raising a child.

“Draw your weapon.” The new general’s face might have been made of steel.

Brown stopped laughing, suddenly furious. “You just don’t get it, do you? You have no idea what I’m doing here, what I’m trying to do! If you knew, you would never be pointing that pistol at me now."

“You disobeyed a direct order from the Senate. You forsake your-“

“Idiot!” yelled Brown, suddenly. Carver stepped back, shocked. His father had never shouted at him before. “The senate is supposed to represent the people, not suppress them! Look at what this country has come to! Look! Even now your own soldiers are slaughtering civilians!”

“They are rebels.”

“They are civilians, fighting with knives and fists against the most powerful guns in the world!”

“They were helping you escape.”

Ex-general Brown stopped shouting. He stared at Carver, furious and disbelieving, searching his son’s eyes for some small trace of himself. He didn’t find any. Slowly the fury faded, and he sloped downwards. He was a broken, old man.

Carver steeled himself. Again he said, though a bit softer, “Draw your weapon.”

An explosion rang off in the distance, and the panic lights flashed one last time, then went out. The only light now came from the archway. Brown looked down. “This won’t bring you glory,” he said.

“THIS ISN’T ABOUT GLORY!” screamed Carver.

Brown didn’t respond. There was only silence, and the muffled screams.

General E. Carver was crying now, crying hot tears of rage and fury. He despised this man, his father. Look at him. Everyone loves him. Everyone loves this man, and they would cry if they found him here, dead.

“Draw your weapon,” said Carver through broken sobs.

“No.”

“DRAW YOUR WEAPON!”

“No.” His father looked up at him. His shadowed face was regretful but determined, like a fallen hero, or a man who had chosen a grim fate. …He was not going to draw his weapon.

A shot rang through the room. The old man bent double, then fell face first, as if in slow motion. His body hit the floor hard.

Carver did not lower his gun. He stared, transfixed, at the blood slowly seeping out from under the fallen body.

There was no life there anymore.

In Evening Air

“In Evening Air” is a beautiful poem written by Theodore Roethke. The poem is valued for its vivid dark images, beautiful language, and fascinating theme. In this narrative, Roethke ponders his own depression and discusses the nature of death, time, and other dark forces that bring endings.

The first hint at the poem’s meaning can be derived from its title: “In Evening Air”. Evening is a classic symbol of endings. The title refers to this solemn part of the day suggests that its theme, meanings, and intentions reside side by side with what the evening brings: an end.

“Dark”, the very first word of the poem, immediately sets a dark tone. Roethke writes “A dark theme keeps me here”. “Theme” here means “dominant feeling”. The words “keep me” imply that he (Roethke) is being held somewhere. “Here” implies that both the reader and Roethke are together in the same place. Roethke loses no time in drawing the reader into the same dark place where Roethke is kept by a dark theme. “Though summer blazes in the vireo’s eye” is the next line. A vireo is a beautiful summer bird, and summer is the brightest and hottest time of the year. Roethke reinforces this imagery by adding the word “blazes”, which gives the image of intense light. Since nature is full of light, the darkness with Roethke is unnatural. The third and forth lines abruptly impose a question upon the reader: “Who would be half possessed / By his own nakedness?” “Nakedness” here may mean a number of things: defenseless, being alone, or simply the human body, while “possessed” refers to infatuation. The word “half” is key, because it implies that while one is still infatuated with his nakedness, he is still conscious of his surroundings. This is opposite of animals (symbols of nature), who are usually fully aware of their surroundings. Therefore, question is directed towards humans, who do spend a great deal of their time pondering themselves. Another meaning could be that Roethke is contrasting himself against the rest of the world. However, the same details still apply: humans or a human pondering his own defenselessness, aloneness, or simply existence.

The third and forth lines seem far removed from the first two, but they are connected if the answer to the question, the effects of the question, or even the question itself is the dark theme that keeps Roethke. The final two lines of the poem shift the reader again into a new direction. “Waking’s my care -- / I’ll make a broken music, or I’ll die.” “Waking” here means “to become cognizant or aware”. In the last line, Roethke compares life to music. Roethke, surrounded by his dark theme, can only get by with a broken life. However, Roethke will continue to lead this broken life, because the alternative is dying. The line could imply that Roethke is not favoring the broken life or death, but simply treating them both as options for him. However, since death comes after “broken music”, it is implied that Roethke’s tone is that of determination, and he does indeed intend to avoid death.

The first stanza is a combination of three ideas. Roethke is kept in darkness even though nature is full of light, either Roethke or humanity is fascinated with their being or predicament, and Roethke intends to become aware and get by with the best life he can lead: a broken one. Throughout his life, Roethke experienced recurring bouts of mental illness: a uniquely powerful depression that offered him “…a new sense of reality” (-Roethke). Roethke also grew up with an affinity for nature. Nature comforted Roethke, yet even nature could not save him from his bouts of depression. This easily fits with Roethke being entrapped within darkness during summer. This links the question in the first stanza as Roethke’s musings during these depressions and the last two lines as Roethke’s determination to live on despite the recurring bouts.

The second stanza is the most complicated. It begins with “Ye littles, lie more close!” “Littles” is not an actual word, and may have many interpretations. It could refer to abstract themes such as hopes or dreams, or “littles” could be more concrete. They could refer to stars, children, or (since Roethke was a teacher) students. Whatever “littles” are, Roethke commands them to “lie more close”, a phrase that may presumably be taken literally. The exclamation point at the end of the line gives it a tone of demand and perhaps desperation. The next two lines are a plea, quite the opposite of the line preceding it: “Make me, O Lord, a last, a simple thing / Time cannot overwhelm.” Roethke might mention God simply as part of the plea, or perhaps to point out how humans may do nothing without him. The simple thing is immune to time, and therefore refers to one who is so simple he does not notice the passing of time.

In the next three lines Roethke tells us of a time when he transcended time, and described it further with: “A bud broke to a rose, / And I rose from a last diminishing.” The plea to become unaffected by time combined with the tale of transcending time in the past tells us that Roethke once was unaffected by time, but he is now and wishes he could somehow return to how he was before. This is an obvious allusion to age: youth often feel unaffected by time because they are young, more healthy, and overall in better shape than adults and remain so for many years. “Diminishing” here means “to become less”. The diminishing, since it is negative, can be tied to the other negative things in the poem: either the darkness the holds Roethke or the passing of time. However, since Roethke mentions the diminishing in a past tense, it is likely that this negative event happened in the past. Whatever it was, Roethke rose from it; he overcame it and grew stronger. Roethke mentions “rose” in both the lines, but each has a different meaning: one is a flower, while the other refers to rising. By using the word twice, though, Roethke has tied the two sentences together with imagery (a bud rising into a rose and Roethke rising from his darkness).

The Heaving Earth

V olcanoe, power, respect it. Alessandra sends us a warning. The natural phenomena are the most powerful, as well as the liest. “Volcano kills, watch out.” We watch out for volcanoes, we map and monitor them. “Fire, power, respect it.” We see the fire, and praise it. “Fire kills, watch out.” We build hydrants and fire trucks. “Flood, power, respect it.” We tell tales of a Great Flood wiping the wicked away. “Flood kills, watch out.” We build our homes on high hills and create insurance. “Hurricane, power, respect it.” We focus our news. “Hurricane kills, watch out.” We evacuate cities.

“Earthquake, power, respect it.”

In 1755 the Lisbon Earthquake broke the Earth’s precious crust and demolished the city of Lisbon, the capital of Portugal. The furious earthquake ended the lives of 68,000 people and buried them within the rubble of the great buildings of the city. All of this happened in less than thirty seconds.

The earthquake, as is common on the coast, triggered a tsunami. An immense wave crashed upon the helpless city, battering ships and docks into planks of wood and sweeping thousands away into the dark sea. Soon afterwards the people, to their horror, discovered that the earthquake, as if in a final effort to rid the world of the dark city forever, had upset lamps and cooking fires during the tumult. The fires ignited a conflagration that burned unchecked for three days, completing the destruction. The city of Lisbon had been completely destroyed; nothing had been able to resist the earth.

The Lisbon Earthquake was caused by a normal fault within the Earth’s crust. Normal faults describe the earth when a layer of rock or crust slips down, causes a rupture within the ground. While normal faults are the most common, they are also the most feared. Normal-fault earthquakes have been notorious for being the most destructive. For example, the 2004 tsunamis were caused by a rupture from a normal fault (they were around twenty feet tall).
When the Lisbon Earthquake occurred, many people concluded that it was the will of an angry God to have the city destroyed. However, they could not explain why God had chosen Lisbon instead of other cities just as notorious, such as London. Others turned to reasoning. The Enlightenment philosophy of Theodicy underwent major developments while trying to cope with the disaster. Many other people turned to science to explain the destruction. Because of their efforts, we now know that the earthquake was of a 9.2 magnitude, had an epicenter of two hundred kilometers, and a tsunami fifty feet high. But perhaps most importantly, these curious thinkers laid down the framework for what would later become seismology, the scientific study of earthquakes. The earthquake had travelled from the depths of the earth with iron intentions to shake our very way of thought.

My grandparents knew the Alaskan Earthquake. On March 27, 1964, 5:36 PM, The Great Alaskan Earthquake struck the Anchorage area. The earthquake registered at 8.6 on the Richter scale, but is now favored as 9.2. Alaska was not prepared for the fabled earthquake. It was Good Friday, and most families were spending the day without worldly concerns. The denizens of Alaska do not own many material goods: they live in small cabins or houses in small towns. The dark thought of destruction seldom entered the minds of the Alaskans, but when it did it came from landslides, hail storms, or blizzards. It never came from robbers, floods, tsunamis, or earthquakes. But blizzards, hail storms, and landslides did not strike at the villages in Alaska that day. My grandmother was wrapped in a wool blanket by the fire in her favorite chair, watching the local news. They interrupted for an important announcement: a great earthquake had just hit Alaska and the surrounding areas. My grandfather remembers being called into the living room to see. On that cold afternoon, with only the fire and blankets for warmth, they saw how with one flick of the earth, 115 lives were taken. I remember being wrapped up with that same blanket next to that same antique fireplace, listening to my grandparents recount the morbid story with terrible accuracy. The Alaskan Earthquake inspired dread and caused devastation to the hopes of people all around the world. The Great Earthquake was completely natural, and, like most natural events, was a solemn reminder of the dust we have come from. “Ashes to ashes,” lectures the priest, “and dust to dust.”

“It’s not the fast life I live, simply living beyond the existing, of equilibrium.” This line is from a poem written by “Vision Ghost”. Living beyond the equilibrium, this is what humans do! Whereas nature sprung from the loins of the earth daring not to upset the balance, we carry our ambitions like fires through an undisturbed night, we scoff at the limitations the cosmos has placed upon us, we burn out our brilliance like the stars themselves, like giant flares of furious fire that reach out into the dark empty void beyond their precious sun before they reach too far and float off into space as ashes and dust.

January 1994 did not come as a lamb. Even in the sunshine state, the chilling air, snow, and sleet battered people into the indoors. And within the earth, tensions stirred. The Northridge Earthquake struck Los Angeles in the early morning of January 17, at 4:31 AM. The earthquake had a magnitude of 6.7, and yet a toll of only 57. Considering the density of the population of Los Angeles, a 6.7 earthquake should have been more than enough to top the Great Alaskan Earthquake. But this was not the case; the toll for the Alaskan Earthquake was twice as large. We had learned from the tragedy of Alaska, and had built ourselves up to meet the tremors of Northridge.

During the crisp morning of January 17 I awoke to the local news. At 7:00 AM, the radio informed me of the earthquake. Later that day, as details on the disaster were eagerly fed to the nation, I was relieved to find the toll at only 57. The news explained that Los Angeles was one of the best prepared places in the world for an earthquake. They had indeed learned from the past disasters: earthquake awareness and safety precautions were high; most
buildings were earthquake resistant as part of their required building code. I sat in my room gazing at the television screen. The white light reflected from the snow shined in through my window. I recalled Darwin’s account of the earthquake he had experienced: “It is indescribable to feel the earth, the very embodiment of solidity, to move and flow beneath your feet like the waves of an ocean.” I could only imagine how the Northridge Earthquake had changed the lives of its participants, to feel the ground beneath them mimic the waves of the ocean. Yet Los Angeles had been able to master these waves, and had surfed the earth’s crust.

The Northridge Earthquake could not take many humans down to the dark, hot caverns from which the tremors came. However, the earthquake proved to be one of the most expensive natural disasters in America’s history, with a total damage estimated at $15 billion. Despite earthquake-resistant building codes, the Northridge quake destroyed many of Los Angeles’ most expensive projects. Many lamented the loss, yet others agreed it was a fair price for the safekeeping of the citizens of California. The earthquake had taken her tribute, one way or the other.

An earthquake is the result of a sudden surge of energy within the Earth’s crust that triggers seismic waves. Earthquakes are literally the direct result of an upset Earth. The cry from a hungry baby, the growl of a threatened dog, the strike of a cornered rattlesnake, or the quaking of the Earth; the cause throughout is distress. Like ants pouring out from an injured anthill, the earth sends its fury through fissures on its surface.

Natural earthquakes occur from faults, faults from the tensions and stress between two tectonic plates. Only recently have we discovered that the earth is moving in slow motion. The Earth’s tectonic plates travel an average of 8.25 inches per year. What the philosophers and religious figures of Lisbon did not realize was that the Earth moves, just like we do. “When you allow peace to flow around the world / then your ness will go and love will love.” This is what Ravi Sathasivam tells us, and yet, despite what we may feel, does the earth not respond as it always has, calm in some moments, but furious after tensions have been held too long? We are but inhabitants on an Earth that heaves with us. Earthquake, power, respect it. It’s not the fast life we live, simply living beyond the existing, of equilibrium.

Taurus

The child was destined from the beginning to change

And bend

And be molded into something more than just a crying baby. With every new face he saw, came a new sensation, a new emotion, until there were so many emotions, they started to combine and shift and reappear

Again,

And again,

And again.

This child was born under the sign of the bull, the constellation of Taurus that predicted everything he would ever amount to be.

Ever.

Taurus is made up of several different stars. Each star has its own solar system. Each solar system has its own planets. Each planet has a history, a legacy, a story.

One boy out of 6.684 billion humans on Earth.

The Distance Between Earth And The Nearest Star

If the Earth was a marble a small boy was playing with, the distance between Proxima Centauri and the that marble would equal the distance between that boy and his father, a soldier in Iraq whom he barely knows.

A Pulsar

For the Millions of Pulsing Stars

Once upon a time, in a galaxy far far away, when the universe was much wilder and younger, there lived a pulsar. The pulsar lived in its own little corner of the universe and was completely alone. Now, when I say “lived in its own little corner of the universe” I do not mean that the pulsar was literally in a corner of the universe. Science has shown us that the universe actually has no corners, but simply goes on and on and on until you get back to where you started. And no, it is not round like the earth. It is actually four-dimensional. To put it simply, it is completely beyond our current understanding. In fact, modern astronomical science is completely beyond the grasp of humans; even to those who study the skies for a living. We may discover certain facts, but these facts are far too outlandish for us to wrap our minds around. Some stars are so enormous that our sun could fit into them seven billion times. …Now can you really picture that? I know I can’t. So why do we bother learning the facts?

We bother with the facts and statistics for the very same reason I am writing this story: hope. As humans, most of us hope to comprehend why the things around us are the way they are. But do we? Just today, I said “I hope you enjoy your year.” to a new student at my school. He pondered for a while, and then replied “I hope… you go #@!% yourself.” Now, I can make an educated guess as to why he said that. Perhaps he was having a bad day, or perhaps he had experienced a tragedy in his past. There are many reasons why he could have been a jerk, but will I ever know for certain? Science is the same way. We can say that hydrogen is essential for life, but how do we know that holds true six trillion light-years away in another galaxy? We don’t; we simply assume it’s true. We continue to attempt to unravel new mysteries that have no guarantee of actually being true and that we could not fully comprehend even if they are.

This story is desperate to tell itself, yet if I am to continue writing it (and you continue reading it) we need to establish right here and now that humankind will never comprehend everything about how things work. We will never come close, because the universe is so immensely huge (and we are such a small part of it), we could never account for all of it. The events that occur in life are so complex and unordered: we will never be able to truly predict anything. Heavenly bodies are so diverse in their nature: we will never be able to explain why they all act certain ways, or why they all orbit here instead of there. We will never be able to calculate how many bodies we can’t see are being affected or are affecting the bodies we can see. And we will never be able to compare the two and arrive at a nice, reasonable conclusion. The reason we try is because it is human nature to hope to understand what we don’t. At least that is my guess. My guess is as good as yours.

Pulsars are tiny stars made entirely of neutrons. Their name comes from the fact that some of them send radio waves out into space, like a lone lighthouse to the sea. The pulsar in our story, like all pulsars, was born when gas from a supernova came together and started to shift, combine, and condense to create a new form. We don’t really comprehend why or even how it happened, so for now we content ourselves in knowing that it did happen. Pulsars have as much (if not more) mass than our sun, and yet are limited to around ten kilometers across. Our particular pulsar weighed as much as the sun and was about nine and a half kilometers wide. Now, something that’s as heavy as the sun but only ten kilometers wide contains a whole lot of matter in a very short space. In fact, I believe pulsars might be the densest heavenly bodies in the universe (but that is just my personal opinion).

Again, we don’t know why pulsars are so small and yet so heavy. All we know is that they are. Now, something as heavy as a pulsar attracts other bodies. Our scientists attribute this to gravity, which is one of their few laws that actually seems to have no exceptions and is universal. The laws of gravity propose that the more mass a body has, the more other bodies are drawn towards it. And so pulsars, being heavy beyond our comprehension, naturally attract other heavenly bodies that end up orbiting around them: and here is where the scientist encounters his problem. All pulsars are incredibly heavy, and so all pulsars should have other bodies floating around them. And yet, for some reason we cannot comprehend, many pulsars do not. Many pulsars are completely alone in the universe. Why they remain solitary with so many bodies floating around in the sky remains a mystery to us. But just because we don’t know why it happens doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen.

Our particular pulsar was one of these mysterious pulsars that had no companions. It lived completely alone in its own little “corner” of the universe. And yet even this pulsar, who lived billions of light-years away from earth, was able to have been reached by our ever-probing curiosity. Our pulsar was discovered in 1982 by a man named Shrinivas Kulkarni. Shrinivas was a jack-of-all-trades when it came to astronomy. He studied pulsars, gamma-ray bursts, and dwarf stars especially. He had already discovered the “Brown Dwarfs” by the time he picked out our little pulsar from the rest of the sky. He dubbed the pulsar a “millisecond pulsar” because of the frantic pace at which it sent out its radio signals. And so, our pulsar became the very first of the millisecond pulsars, and was given the name PSR B1937+21. Shrinivas moved on and continued his successful work as an astronomer. In 2001 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, London, being one of only ten living Indians to receive this honor. He has now retired, and is living out the rest of his years as a proud, successful, and well-liked man.

Shrinivas brought the millisecond pulsars to the world’s scrutiny, and even after his retirement progress is being continually made in this field. Scientists make new observations on these abnormally fast pulsars every day. In fact, in 2005 our scientists unveiled PSR J1748-2446ad, a pulsar with the fastest spinning time yet recorded: 716 times per second. One Mississippi. That was one second. The pulsar just did 716 spins. Just why this pulsar goes so fast (and how long it can keep it up) is beyond our comprehension. But we do not mind: it feels good to have discovered such an abnormal heavenly body, and to announce its existence to the world so that all may scrutinize it in the night sky.

But that pulsar is not the focus of our story. Our pulsar, now known as PSR B1937+21, currently spins 614 times per second. Compared to the incomprehensible pace of PSR J1748-2446ad, this isn’t that fast. But concerning pulsars as a whole, ours is fairly quicker than most. Now I have said before that some pulsars send out radio signals into the vastness of the cosmos. Not all pulsars do this: our scientists have found many pulsars that do not send out signals as they spin. They are content to simply be; they don’t need to use radio waves. But many pulsars scientists have discovered do send out these signals. The first pulsar was located because of the signals it sent out (thus the name “pulsar”), and likewise our own pulsar is far too distant and small to be seen by us here on earth. Only through all the signals it emitted were we able to locate it. Though all the signals are typically radio waves, pulsars each produce their own signals a bit differently. We do not fully comprehend the nature of our pulsar’s waves, or how they’re produced. But we have been able to lump pulsars into a few broad categories depending on some of the basic features their waves have. Our pulsar’s waves (we suspect) are basically fueled by the continual decaying of its magnetic field. Scientists have dubbed these types of pulsars Magnetars.

We do not comprehend how long it takes PSR B1937+21’s waves to reach us, but we assume that by the time we can hear them they’re long in the past. As far as we know, PSR B1937+21 is still out there in its little “corner” of the universe, sending out its signals all around itself 614 times per second into the emptiness of space.


Don Backer was thirty-nine and had no wife or children. He lived alone in his Californian house, although he was seldom there. Don spent most of his hours (and all of his days) in the observatories at which he worked. If you saw Don on the street, you would see a small, rat-like man with disheveled brown hair, crooked and yellow teeth, and unkempt fingernails. Perhaps most noticeable would be his terrible posture: he might be twice as tall if he could have managed to stand up straight.

However, the chances of anyone seeing Don out and about slid downwards with each sunset. Don was by nature a shy man, and did not cope well with the stares he received. And so, every time Don went out during the day, he was less inclined to ever go out again by the time he made it back to his shelter. And so as the years passed, so did Don gradually pass out of society and peoples’ minds. And Don stayed only in his two observatories and his house.

Yet in 1982 even his house (along with one of the observatories) would fade away during the climax of Don’s work. Don had been putting all his time into his most recent discovery: signals from space that resemble a pulsar’s but were far too rapid to be from one. By now Don constantly dwelt within the observatory. Long after the other astronomers had thrown off their coats and binoculars and had gone out to meet the evening, you could still find Don working away at his project in some dark laboratory. He would scuttle around from his machines to his desk to his instruments; back and forth, back and forth, with only the meager light from his lamp to guide him.

Tonight, Don Backer would finally be able to prove that the rapid signals came from an undiscovered type of pulsar. And yet, for some reason he could not summon the excitement that was supposed to come naturally with new discoveries. Don sat down at his desk, but instead of writing he paused, and started thinking. Stopping to think was a bad habit Don had been trying to overcome, but many times his thoughts would simply overwhelm him. Why did he not feel any excitement? Where was his sense of accomplishment? Don felt empty, and that frightened him, because if he was empty then that meant he had no purpose. He quickly snapped out of it, however, and started to write down the reasons why he might feel the way he did. After a few minutes, he came to the reasonable conclusion that it was lack of sleep.

“Well, I suppose the best option for me now is to journey home and rest myself.”

Don sat in the dark room, with only the hum of his machines acknowledging his decision. Maybe he put up his papers, turned off the light, and had his hand on the doorknob. Or maybe he didn’t leave his desk, and never even came close to opening the door. Either way, Don did not journey out into the brisk air of that night. Instead, he continued working. After all, he was almost done with his project, and he wanted his notes to be so detailed that even Shrinivas couldn’t revise them.

O.O

The child was destined from the beginning to change

And bend

And be molded into something more than just a crying baby.

With every face he saw, came a new sensation, a new emotion, until there were so many emotions, they started to combine

And shift

And reappear again and again and again.

This child was born under the sign of the bull, the constellation of Taurus that predicted everything he would ever amount to be. Ever.

Taurus is made up of several different stars. Each star has its own solar system. Each solar system has its own planets. Each planet has a history, a legacy, a story.

One boy out of 6.684 billion humans on Earth.

Astro Metaphor

Unlike animals, humans constantily affect each other in emotional ways. Every person you meet influences you, and so in a way you are the sum of everyone who has influenced you, and everyone else has a bit of you in them. I believe that the interactions between humans form the constellation of life on earth.

What I Know About Astronomy

Well, I know how to spell it. I know it involves the study of the stars, and constellations. I know that every star is a sun. I've read a couple books about space (and by a couple I mean one) which did stress the scale of the universe. If earth was the size of a period then neptune would be 32 miles away, or something like that. It is (like you said, Mr. Maddox) mind blowing.
I know about the constellations. I am born under the bull, Taurus (which basically boils down to "I have a huge sex drive and bad temper"). My girlfriend is the ram, my best friend is a Libra, but I guess that doesn't matter. But the constellations are said to influence what kind of person you are, depending on which one you were born under. It's fun to believe, and sure, Taurus has got some things about me right, but I don't know.... Maybe in another 50 years scientists will discover some new theory that explains how the months you were born in alter you're personality. Until then, no comment.
I know that astronomers have to know and use a whole lot of math. When I was growing up, I was fascinated by space. Actually, I still am. But the math part was the one thing that kept me from pursuing it as a career. I haven't really thought about it that much since I made that decision, but nowadays I don't look so harshly on math. Maybe I should give it another shot. I've always known that either as a job or hobby, I would never lose touch with space. I could never lose touch with space. I know it's not very original, but honestly I don't think anything fascinates me more than the Final Frontier.
And that's my blog for today. Peace

First Blog

So.
It is August 18, 2008. First day of school. One of my assignments was to create a blog.

Ta-da!!

Look at all the faces I can make!
:D ;D :) ;) 8D 8) 8( //_^

Hello my name is Jimmy Pop and I'm a dumb white guy.
Far away! This ship has taken me far away!
I STAY AWAY...
I don't mind stealing bread from the mouths of decadens...