Sometimes the Universe offers just the perfect way to express our feelings.
A space cloud 7,500 light-years away gave us the best farewell we can think of for all this one-year-old garbage fire, 2020.
This small pile of material is part of a much larger cloud complex called the Carina Nebula and, under normal circumstances, would not be given a nickname of its own. But its distinctive shape led scientists to call it the defiant finger.
And that’s exactly what it looks like – the old obscene gesture of “go do terrible things for yourself” and “leave, but with much rudder words.”
(NASA, ESA, N. Smith / UC Berkeley and The Hubble Heritage Team / STScI / AURA)
In fact, the defiant finger is what is known as the Bok Globule. These are small, dark, dense nodes of dust and gas that are often the birthplace of stars. As the denser regions of the cloud condense more, they can collapse under their own gravity and begin to rotate in a star.
The Defiant Finger, comprising 6 solar masses worth of material, may have stars forming inside it; because it is so dense, it is hard to see inside. The brightness it seems to have is from external sources – the light of nearby bright stars.
(NASA, ESA, N. Smith / UC Berkeley and The Hubble Heritage Team / STScI / AURA)
Because young stars are usually bright and hot, they explode with radiation. The outside of the Defiant Finger is probably illuminated and ionized by either the Wolf-Rayet WR 25 star, a massive short-lived star at the end of its life; Tr16-244, a young hot supergiant; or a combination of both.
But as they light up, these stars also destroy: slowly but surely, the Defiant Finger evaporates. At the current estimated rate of mass loss, the dust cloud has a projected lifespan of only 200,000 to 1 million years.
This is not very long in cosmic terms, not very long at all. But it is long enough to make a poetic statement: a blank scream, a defiant gesture in the face of inevitability. And a really appropriate way to close the door in 2020.
Thanks, space. And bring in 2021.