A spectacular, luminous ring offers the best evidence yet that a nearby star is circled by a newly formed solar system.
The ring is composed of dust particles in orbit around Fomalhaut, a bright star located just 25 light years away in the constellation Pisces Australis - or the Southern Fish. A recent image captured with the Hubble Space Telescope - which makes the system look uncannily like the Great Eye of Sauron from the blockbusting Lord of the Rings trilogy - confirms that Fomalhaut's ring is curiously offset with respect to the star.
The most likely explanation is that the gravity of one or more unseen planets is dragging the ring askew. The fact that the inner edge of the ring is relatively well-defined adds further weight to the argument because it suggests the unseen planets are sweeping up stray dust within the radius of the ring.
From The New Scientist
The following is the complete post and comments, the post date being
FRIDAY, JUNE 26, 2009 (I added the picture and reference to Arwen tonight)
I am a long time Lord Of The Rings fan. I yearned to follow the elves to the lands in the west. To not know how the emigration of the elves turned out seems cruel to me. Of course, not even Tolkein was capable of telling a true elven story. Elves are NOT human. In order to be remotely like humans they have to step down, corral, back off, pin hole their presence. Otherwise they are at right angles to this plane, hard to even see. When they accepted Bilbo, it meant that a certain elven group would have to exercise that discipline to tend to him. It was what Aragorn's lover Arwen was prepared to fix in place so she could be with him, to essentially cripple her elven self for love. It is that crippling that would render her mortal. I can't write from the elven point of view either.
Arwen Undómiel (Arwen Evenstar)
The Ski Tower
Looks like Sauron's eye
Could appear any moment there
Staring down on skiers
Not suspecting anything
Like such awful disaster.
The ring bearer
Needs to find another way
Up the snowy slopes.
January 19, 2009 12:21 PM
*********************************
I got off my high center. This is not unlike stepping out of my elven self for the sake of movement along the high Way. I don't remember writing in code like that. It is a good alternative to being hung up and this being the way I find motivation to get going.
High Centered
You told me to move.
You held the whip's long shadow
In your whipping hand.
Made my withers twitch
To see that lurking notion
Of motivation.
I got off my high center,
Took to the highway again.
January 19, 2009 1:16 PM
POSTED BY CHRISTOPHER AT 6/26/2009 07:43:00 PM
10 COMMENTS:
Michelle said...
Christopher! I am clapping my hands with delight :)
Thank you
*big grin*
...and as for finding another way, yeah, some of us can't 'move' the same way around this unfamiliar place.
x
JUNE 27, 2009 2:43 PM
christopher said...
It is an unfamiliar place. Yes it is!
You're welcome, and you are in my thoughts.
JUNE 27, 2009 3:19 PM
Michelle said...
We all shine for each other my friend.
You know this.
love
x
JUNE 27, 2009 4:07 PM
Michelle said...
Not trying to hog your blog :)
But
go here
http://michelle-colourmyworld.blogspot.com/2009/02/into-night.html
Seemed relevant
x
JUNE 27, 2009 4:30 PM
christopher said...
Michelle, you are not hogging my blog. I think you are excited just now is all. Also many people are leaving special things here and your link is special.
JUNE 27, 2009 7:38 PM
Woman in a Window said...
Makes me laugh a little at all of us about our little business while a big eye blinks out penultimate truths somewhere far above.
Are there always other paths?
JUNE 27, 2009 8:53 PM
Michelle said...
The earth sighed
and the poetry
fell
like rain
cried through
the eye
of a howling storm
and nothing
nothing
would
ever
be the same
Thank you :)
xx
JUNE 27, 2009 9:30 PM
christopher said...
Erin, indeed. Perspective.
Michelle, thank you for your contributions and your warmth.
JUNE 27, 2009 10:05 PM
Lucy said...
I always thought Tolkien entertained angels unawares. I think you may be one of them...
JUNE 27, 2009 11:59 PM
christopher said...
Lucy, if that was true, I would have to deny it as a condition of employment. I am just another bozo on the bus. :)
One of my closer friends these days is a man with a major hit to his record in the music business. He hums along, making enough money with his band, originally out of Detroit. He lives nearby here in Oregon and the others are scattered across the country. They have a business machine that gathers play dates for them at casinos and such. They meet back in the midwest for practice sessions and composing sessions. Otherwise he is just busy with his music.
He is also active in his son's school and keeps connected in his family life.
Of himself, he says he has a trade. Other people think other things about him. Me, I think it is blessing. At least I feel blessed knowing the man before I knew anything about his music, knowing the man first. He is a simple man who loves his family.
Exactly.
JUNE 28, 2009 7:41 AM
Christopher, I still can't get used to the idea of calling any one Christopher. Well, any way, my whole reading,and hopefully my writing, experance has a firm foundation in the world that Tolken channeled onto paper. While reading books like his a feeling/notion creeps over my soul that I'm not reading a story, insted I am experanceing events that are happening out of phase, maby by just a nano second, from our time line. I could believe that the authors that make these "stories" are just filtering info that the rest of us cannot, or will not experance.
ReplyDeleteI recommend this page and the 3,000 related pages if you want to get the skinny on Tolkein and Middle Earth. He wrote and discussed his work extensively and was full of opinions and facts about it. The whole story is much deeper, and in outline follows Aragorn and Arwen after they take the throne.
ReplyDeleteMiddle Earth faded from the scene some six thousand years before our time.
http://lotr.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page
good to see how tolkien can inspire such resonances and convergences. thanks for this tapestry of here, now and then...
ReplyDeleteI know I am not the only one by far to have this yearning to return to Middle Earth. I read the books several times in the past, and since then have seen the movies several times on cable. I am as familiar with Middle Earth as I am some parts of my own life.
ReplyDelete