My brother did not turn one of my cats ass-skyward to take this picture of the black hole at the center of MCG-6-30-15!!

Black Hole at the Center of Galaxy MCG-6-30-15

My brother, Richard, managed to take a picture or two this evening, and while trying to focus the camera on an apparent UFO hovering above our cabin-cum-chalet-cum-shack-cum-cat-house, accidentally focused on a massive black hole, the one at the center of MCG-6-30-15. (MCG-6-30-15 is a galaxy "out there," but nothing to be concerned about vis-a-vis UFOs and the such.)

Anyway, Gavin Hamilton, an astrophysics professor at the University of Colorado in Boulder and Andrew Polhemus, a physics teacher in Fort Collins, Colorado, are working on a project to visualize what an "infaller" might see if he or she were swallowed by a super massive black hole at the center of the Milky Way--only conjectured to even exist, but a "reality" in many high school and undergraduate astronomy books. (Sort of like the Theory of Evolution, but less obvious ...)

Anyway, among some of the interesting tid-bits uncovered in their research are two that strike me as noteworthy:

(1) It's really the space that is being sucked in by the black hole and light, for instance (and everything else save God and His angels for other "instances") are like canoes going over a waterfall--that is, light (like the canoe) is simply falling slower than the space around it.

and

(2) The earth is rather safe in that even the nearest black holes are hundreds of light years away from us, and further, even if our own sun were to be replaced by a black hole like the one in MCG-6-30-15, we wouldn't even be sucked in by that black hole only eight light minutes away from our earth.

Of course, no one really has any idea what's inside the event horizon of a black hole, so we don't really know what there is to be afraid of anyway.

Just ask my brother, Richard. He has been living in one since last October.

On the other hand, you might listen in on an interesting series of talks on Armageddon at the First Baptist Church (FBC) of Iowa Falls for a peek inside that "event horizon." (I specifically refer you to the visual and audio of "What in the World #9.)

So as not to give you the impression that I'm anti-Baptist (I most assuredly AM NOT!) or that I'm not a believer (I most assuredly AM!), let me simply state that many of my believing friends have an obsession with Armageddon not too unlike the average astrophysicist's obsession with what's inside the event horizon of a black hole.

Life's simply too short for me to be counting the angels on the head of either pin--the event horizon of a black hole or Hal Lindsay's imagination! But I have to embarrassingly admit to having enjoyed a couple of books from the "Left Behind" series anyway and absolutely loved the entire Harry Potter collection.