Helioaxiomatics

by Shaun A. Lawton 

Heliophysics

   The Oort cloud is an area of debris divided into two regions surrounding our Sun, first the disc-shaped inner formation much closer to us (called the Hills cloud) and secondly the more spheroid shaped outer formation much farther away (the Oort cloud proper).  The distances these formations are positioned from our Sun have been speculated to range from 2,000 AUs to as far as 200,000 AUs (.03 to 2.3 light years). This cloud of orbiting ephemera is comprised predominantly of icy planetisimals.  

   To provide an idea how far from our Sun these theoretical formations of barren, frozen matter are, keep in mind that both the Kuiper belt and the scattered disc (the remaining  two reservoirs of TNOs) are less than one-thousandth as far from the Sun as the Oort cloud. The outer limit of the Oort cloud defines the cosmographical boundary of our solar system. 

   If the map is not the territory, then cosmography does not define the dominion of outer space. It is hypothesized that centaurs and comets most likely originate from somewhere in the Oort cloud.  Centaurs were named due to their sharing characteristics of both asteroids and comets. They are small solar system bodies whose orbits are perturbed by the gas giants. It is estimated there may be as few as 44,000 of them to as many as 10,000,000.  The first centaur to be discovered is called 944 Hidalgo. It was first observed the same year that Pluto was, in 1920.  It took another fifty-seven years before the centaur named 2060 Chiron was spotted (in 1977), indicating there may be a population of them.  The largest known centaur is named 10199 Chariklo. It orbits our Sun between Saturn and Uranus, grazing the orbit of Uranus.  It was discovered in 1997, twenty years after 2060 Chiron. Seventeen years after that, by observing a stellar occultation in the year 2014, 10199 Chariklo was revealed to have two rings, and became the first minor planet known to have rings.  It's potentially a dwarf planet with a diameter of 252 km. The orbits of centaurs are dynamically unstable which leads eventually to their ejection from our solar system.  

   It is theorized that the outer Oort cloud is only loosely bound to our solar system. If so, it would therefore be easily affected by the force of gravity from passing stars and our galaxy itself. It's speculated that these combined gravitational forces will occasionally dislodge these outer planetary bodies and send them toward our inner solar system.  

Termination Shock

   The cavity in the encompassing interstellar medium formed by our Sun is called the heliosphere. It's like a vast bubble continually inflated by plasma emitted from our star. The termination shock is that point in our heliosphere where the solar wind slows down to subsonic speeds because of interactions with our direct interstellar medium. The termination shock is believed  to exist at about 75 to 90 AUs from the Sun.  

Plasmanalysis 

   If we use our penchant for breaking down the cosmos about us into constituent parts in an effort to understand and then ironically achieve something closer toward the opposite of comprehending, then it goes without saying we could potentially incorporate a trick to spur on a more genuine sense of knowing the real nature of our surrounding universe.  Beginning with the tantalizing clue embodied by the word "surrounding," we may begin our odyssey of exploration by inverting our assumption that the universe"surrounds" us and instead, imagine that it exists somehow within our own hologrammatic superstructure that we've come to misleadingly refer to as "outer space."  

   Working back from this proposition, we might then adroitly leap to the extraordinary consideration that regardless of there being "billions and billions" of stars and galaxies in existence (a mere quantification), perhaps the true quality of nature encompasses everything as one singularity (of which the stars are mere cells of a larger colony or organism). If this were to be the case, well then of course this singular presence practically defies our ability to fathom its total nature. Yet we might make headway by contemplating that so-called 'existence' implies the possibility of 'non-existence'--an implication which itself must be held suspect due to our already having conceded to the possibility our knowledge of subsistence may be both limited and off-base enough from the startling picture as to more or less be cataloged as incorrect.  Here is where the very equilibrium of our grasp lies threatened, because certain words (like "nothing," for example) point toward that which we are fundamentally incapable of processing with a suitable degree of rational coherence. Such are the consequences of the relativity of our position in the quantum realm. 

   Since our seemingly thorough scrutiny of the nature of our own planet through the lens of science has revealed many relative facts that we have measured and duplicated with enough experimentation to at least provide us with a stable enough platform by which we have perceived some of the elemental forces at work here upon this third planet orbiting our local star, we are at least offered an opportunity by which we may, perhaps, envision a model closer to the beating heart of reality. The idea that the entire universe may be connected by vast, electromagnetic umbilical cords threading through the manifestation of quasars and black holes in the form of plasma before it cools down enough to transmogrify into the baser quantum states of gases, liquids, and solids which we find ourselves both surrounded by and comprised of ourselves may occur to any thinking beings whose attention spans for such meticulous thought exercises aren't too limited to consider more fully than before.  

   Our being immersed in this smattering of celestial "trees" begins to immediately cloud our minds to this cosmic "forest" of which we appear to be just individual dwellers.  Sometimes I consider the skein of blue sky to be the membrane which better represents our own skin than the single largest organ of the human body itself does, and I find myself imagining if this translucent barrier were to be crossed, would it result in an inversion of perception where everything we formerly imagined to be right-side-in were in actuality wrong-side-out, and by that I mean to suggest our incarnation as necessarily being equipped with bicameral minds which process the stimuli about us by virtue of split-mind objectification may result in a binary paradigm of perception that limits true comprehension of our emergent situation to a more manageable disposition of preconception; i.e, a condition tantamount to an ignorance that we may only slowly, if at all, occasionally begin to grow out of before reaching the individual limits of our respective tethers to the ground of being. 

   The fruition of this predilection manifests in the form of awakened Zen masters and poets or ardent disciples of ontological philosophy in the process of attempting to master abstract logic and concrete ideologies. It's been suggested as well as outright stated in various human belief systems that knowledge itself may be "the forbidden fruit" which we are advised to refrain from indulging in, a reference that in and of itself may point to the dark heart of our paradoxical situation of having been granted not only existence here in this present domain but also the ability to perceive it. It's been hinted that what defines our materiality would be better expressed in terms of information than matter itself as we are accustomed to thinking of it. 

   To understand the universe of matter as being information itself and our awareness of it as a mere reflection of that appears to beckon some human acolytes of accuracy onward in their search for meaning. As an ardent supporter of these notions, it's now occurring to me after all these extensive considerations that the best thing I might do for myself as I seem to approach the very threshold of apprehension in order to glimpse that obscure and glossy impression of the fruit borne of this personal quest, would be to all of a sudden cease and desist with continuing to reach out for this harvest of wisdom, and to turn my mind away from it, recalling the urgency of that alleged commandment still echoing from various sacred texts we've become familiar with over many generations. Although this information appears to have presented itself enough for me to be aware of its presence, I must consider the occluded nature of my general awareness remains enshrouded in doubt, if not near total blindness. And we all know what they say about ignorance. This may be just one of the reasons it can hurt to dream.