Which galaxy is older? Elliptical or Spiral?

Which galaxy is older? Which galaxy is younger? Where do we stand in this Illusion of Time? 

Astronomy Picture of the Day, December 5, 1997: Seeing Through Galaxies (White et al., 1997). Spiral galaxy NGC 5091 is in the foreground and Elliptical galaxy NGC 5090 is in the background, both about 100 million light-years distant in the constellation Centaurus. Tilted nearly on edge, the dust lanes in the spiral galaxy are clearly visible.  

Either/Or. Is the whole of the galaxy a centrifuge or a centripetal drain? If the supermassive black hole in the nuclear center of each galaxy has been formed by “gobbling up” millions and billions of stars as current theories suggest, then the galaxy is a centripetal drain, wherein the black hole is swallowing the mass of the galaxy star by star. However, if the bright “black hole” in the center of the galaxy is indeed a supermassive burning Orb that is the site of an ongoing Big-Bang process, making all the hydrogen that forms the stars and fuses into the atoms and atomic-molecular mass of the entire galaxy, then the galaxy is a centrifuge.

When we look at the sequence of galaxy evolution, knowing what we do about atomic evolution, knowing that atoms of higher atomic weight have evolved sequentially by the process of thermonuclear fusion in the stars, we know that the elliptical galaxy has to develop first and the spiral galaxy has to develop subsequently. This is evident because the elliptical galaxy is relatively dust free and contains globular clusters of metal-poor Population II stars, whereas the spiral galaxy is heavily laden with dust lanes made of higher atomic-weight atoms and molecules and contains metal-rich Population I stars.

Through the eyes by the original, single Big Bang model, all the hydrogen and most of the helium in the universe were formed en masse at the same moment in Time, at the Big Bang beginning of the physical universe 20 billion years ago. Then the hydrogen and helium cooled and rippled apart and collapsed into separate nebulous clouds that formed dust-free, metal-poor, star-filled galaxies, which are the elliptical galaxies we see today. As Space and Time as well as everything else all began at the point of the single Big Bang, all galaxy evolution had to be aligned on a single line of evolutionary time. Atoms of higher atomic weight are known to be formed by nuclear fusion in the stars. Accordingly, metal-poor Population II stars had to be formed first and metal-rich Population I stars had to be formed later. Therefore, in accordance with this single line of evolutionary time, metal-poor Population II stars are believed by science to be older because they had to be formed shortly after the original, single Big Bang. Hence, metal-poor Population II stars are said to have been formed 15 billion years ago. As elliptical galaxies consist largely of metal-poor Population II stars and are devoid of metal-rich Population I stars, the elliptical galaxies are all thought by science to have been formed shortly after the original Big Bang, and are therefore called older. In contrast, metal-rich Population I stars by necessity occur later in the evolutionary sequence because they contain atomic elements heavier than helium, including carbon and iron and nickel and other heavier atoms, which all have to be formed by nuclear fusion which requires longer evolutionary process time. Therefore, in accordance with this single line of evolutionary time, metal-rich Population I stars are designated as a group to be younger and are all said to have been formed less than 100 million years ago.

As the spiral arms of spiral galaxies consist of metal-rich Population I stars, the spiral galaxies are viewed by science as being younger. This conclusion has been strengthened by evidence. There is active ongoing star formation visible in the spiral galaxies. And if one disregards the puzzling presence of the young “blue straggler” stars observed in the globular clusters of ellipticals, active star formation is not seen in the “older” elliptical galaxies. Furthermore, as the Hubble Space Telescope looked farther back into prior eras of Space-Time history, it became clearly evident that the elliptical galaxies preexisted the spiral galaxies, because the elliptical galaxies in the past look the same as they do in the present era, whereas galaxies in the ancient past do not resemble the spiral galaxies we see in the present era. Hence all elliptical galaxies are viewed by science today as being older and all spiral galaxies are viewed as being younger, so the elliptical galaxy in the picture above is considered older than the spiral galaxy.

Through the eyes of the recurring and ongoing Big-Bang model, the universe looks entirely different because the evolution of the galaxies is not locked by Space-Time into a single line of evolutionary sequence. With the Gravity Implosion—Energy Explosion model of the 4^th spatial dimension, Time is simply a function of motion and movement, simply a measure of process rather than Time driving process and mandating the sequence of evolutionary events. As a consequence, the ages of the galaxies look entirely different. With the recurring and ongoing Big-Bang model, galaxies can be born at any time and any place in space, as determined by the physical processes that exist in the Pre-Bang Universe of Energy and Particles that gravitationally form the supermassive black hole density that gives rise to the Big Bang. As physical universe evolution is not locked to a single line of evolutionary time, the relative age of the two galaxies pictured above is exactly the opposite! The elliptical galaxy is younger and the spiral galaxy is older, because their age is defined by the time it takes for their respective evolutionary processes to form them. And it takes much longer to materialize the metal-rich stars and massive amounts of visible atomic-molecular dust in a spiral galaxy than it does to materialize a relatively dust-free elliptical galaxy composed largely of first generation stars. I can say this with some degree of confidence because of the enormous evolutionary process time it must take to form the astronomically massive amounts of visible dust that are contained within spiral galaxies: Stars are born and stars die. Generations of stars are born and generations of stars die. Dust is different! Dust is born in galaxies and accumulates, and accumulates, and accumulates, and accumulates, and accumulates—MASSIVELY!

When I realized this, that the last Line of Evolution is the Evolution of Galaxy Dust, the pieces fell together and the picture was complete. I also realized that if this insight can be demonstrated to the scientific world, that galaxies do in fact materialize and grow from inside their nuclear center outward and, as a result, elliptical galaxies do in fact evolve into spiral galaxies, then we have a new model for the evolution of the galaxies and the entire physical universe!

Through the eyes of this ongoing Big-Bang perspective, let’s now look at the last and longest Line of Evolution: The Evolution of Galaxy Dust. Then we will have seen it All.

Dawn in the Depth: From Hydrogen to Helium to Dust and Us

Side by Side, we are looking at two Millenniums: Millennium Past and Millennium to Come.

 In the center of the spiral galaxy, we are looking at the optical remains of the elliptical galaxy that formed it. In the elliptical galaxy, we are looking at the ancestor of a spiral galaxy that remains yet to come into existence. Such is the nature of galaxies Near and Far.

January 16, 1998, Astronomy Picture of the Day, Dusting Spiral Galaxies (Keel and White, 1998). This Hubble Space Telescope image shows dust in the outer reaches of a foreground spiral galaxy backlit by an elliptical galaxy. This “overlapping” pair of galaxies is catalogued as AM 1316-241 and is about 400 million light-years away in the constellation Hydra. Astronomers used overlapping pairs of galaxies to backlight the dark matter of Dust in Spiral Galaxies.

As the old story goes, we human beings all came from Atom, the atom Hydrogen. And isn’t that the truth. We are born of the Dust of Earth that was born of the Dust of the Milky Way Galaxy.

You may not have heard this old story in this way before, because the story remains yet to be told. It is the story of our next millennium. But isn’t that the nature of the Dawn in the Depth of a New Millennium? Whether that dawn be the transformation of one’s own speck of individual consciousness or the transformation of the collective human consciousness of our entire species? The process begins with insight in the depth of consciousness. Just like the birth of a new star, the process is metaphorically the same: the Light remains enshrouded within the nebula from which it was formed and born, until the nebula of confusion is burned away and the Cosmos becomes clear as it actually is. Then the facts fall into place. At least that’s the way it happened in me. And the pattern of facts I see as a result seems to make so much sense: Physical universe creation and evolution occurred galaxy by galaxy from inside nuclear center outward in the following manner, order and sequence: From Hydrogen to Stars to Helium to Dust.

And the rest is history.

But where did all this Dust come from? And how important is this Dust in the shape and form of things both Far and Near? We know the answer Near because we are Here! Here amidst this green and watery spread of thin skin that is the surface of planet Earth. But what about Far? What about the galaxies? How important is the Dust as a determinant of their shape and form?  

November 2, 1995, Space Telescope Science Institute Press Release No. STScI-PR95-44: Embryonic Stars Emerge From Interstellar “EGGs” (Hester and Scowen, 1995). M16, the 16^th object in Messier’s 18^th century catalog of “fuzzy” permanent objects in the sky, is a nearby star-forming region in our own Galaxy, located 7,000 light-years from Earth in the constellation Serpens. M16 shows a unique side view of the structure of a typical star-birth region. The nebula in the image above, called the Eagle Nebula, is a bowl-shaped blister on the side of a dense cloud of cold interstellar gas [Top Left, Top Right Below]. The caption for the HST image above, which was entitled Pillars of Creation in a Star-Forming Region, explains that the dark pillar-like structures are columns of cool molecular hydrogen gas and dust, and that these pillars protrude from the interior wall of a dark molecular cloud like stalagmites from the floor of a cavern. The tallest pillar in the image above is about a light-year long from base to tip.

The caption accompanying the Star-Birth Clouds image [Below, Bottom Center], which is an HST close-up of the tallest pillar of M16, reports that the column of cool molecular hydrogen gas and dust is an incubator for new stars, that the stars are embedded inside the finger-like protrusions extending from the top of the nebula, and that each “fingertip” (Below, Bottom Right, finger-like protrusions at the very top of the cloud) is somewhat larger than our own solar system. The cloud contains microscopic dust particles of carbon, silicates and other compounds similar to those found in terrestrial and lunar rocks. This trace dust is said to account for only a fraction of the nebula’s mass, but it’s enough to absorb visible light and cloak star birth. The young stars emit intense ultraviolet radiation. This torrent of ultraviolet light heats the gas in the molecular cloud, causing it to “evaporate” and stream away from the surface by a process called photoevaporation. The Hubble images show the photoevaporating gas streaming away from the surface of the columns. As the pillars themselves are slowly eroded away by the ultraviolet light, small globules of even denser gas buried within the pillars are uncovered. These “Evaporating Gaseous Globules (EGGs)”, which are denser than their surroundings, are left behind after the gas around them is gone, and these are the sites of new star birth [Below, Bottom Right, finger-like protrusions]. 

 Near and Far. We have just looked at the Dust in two spiral galaxies: Dust in an adjacent spiral arm of our own galaxy (M16) and Dust in a spiral arm of the distant overlapping pair of galaxies (AM 1316-241). Is the dust that forms the spiral arms of these two galaxies substantially the same? Does the Dust have equivalent centrifugal weight and mass? In the distance, the spiraling pattern of the galaxy looks like a pinwheel, like the dust-laden arms have been spiraled outward from center by centrifugal force, which would by necessity require that the Dust have considerable centrifugal weight as well as visible mass. Nearby, the numerous nebulae of dust that form the spiral arms of our own galaxy, of which nebula M16 is but one tiny representative example, all look like giant molecular clouds of gas. How could clouds of molecular gas with only “trace amounts” of dust have sufficient centrifugal mass and angular momentum to spiral outward as they so obviously have?

Let’s pause here for perspective, because to answer this we have to look both Near and Far.

Stars are bigger than planets and planets are bigger than moons. But strange things happen in the distance! As a result of our Locus of Vision, the Earth is bigger than the sun, and the Moon is bigger than the earth! That is the natural optical illusion that occurs when objects are viewed Near and Far. We all experience this optical illusion of relative size everyday of our lives, because visual experience, like all sensory experience, is always a function of the Microcosmic perspective. So, as an image we can visualize, when we are sitting inside a train as it screeches into the station, we can only see the parts of the train we are in and near. But if we get off the train and stand beside the tracks that stretch straight all the way to the horizon, we can watch the train shrink as it moves away from the station until we can see each countable car and the whole of the train, and shrink further until the parts disappear into an indistinguishable line of moving thread, and shrink further until the entire length of the sturdy-thirty-car-long-locomotive thread is measurably smaller than a fly that decides to land on the end of your nose and go for a walk, in search for a delicious molecular morsel of food. Such is the natural optical illusion that occurs Near and Far. What is Near is Large, what is far is small, even though the objects are the same size.

So when I look at the stars at night, I know that each tiny little star is as big as the Sun. But when I look at the spiral and elliptical galaxy pair (AM 1316-241) pictured above, it really makes me wonder—because I can’t distinguish individual stars at all! All I see are “fuzzy” hazes of light! And if our optical resolution can’t even see those stars that are as big as our own Sun, what on Earth is hiding inside all those “fuzzy” blurs and threads of visible Dust? It reminds me of the days of Charles Messier 200 years ago when he, with telescope in hand, began cataloguing the permanent “fuzzy” objects in the sky and giving them numerical identity in order to differentiate the stationary nebula from the moving comets he was seeking. As optical telescope resolution improved, Messier’s “fuzzy” nebulae turned out to be celestial objects of colossally different size in a Cosmos that was—hither—unto—then—utterly—unimaginable! Messier didn’t even know that he was sitting inside the spiral arm of a Galaxy Train and looking out the Window past a fly, which he had just cataloged as nebula M16, and was peering into the passing Cosmos Countryside where he took note of another permanent “fuzzy” object that he duly catalogued as nebula M87. When things became less “fuzzy” one and two hundred years later, “nebula M87” turned out to be giant elliptical Galaxy M87 in the center of a whole cluster of galaxies—a Whole New World—that is still jettisoning into atomic physical existence right in front of our eyes!

Now, at the present point of our journey into the depth of the Cosmos, the dust in nebula M16 doesn’t seem nearly as “fuzzy” as the dust in the galaxy pair AM 1316-241, so let’s examine this “fuzzy” factor of distance a little closer to see if we can unveil some of the centrifugal significance and mysterious weight that lies buried inside this Dark Matter of Dust. First, let’s examine the relative distances of the celestial images we’ve been looking at because distance affects our optical resolution, such that small seems Large and large seems Small, which has a tendency to affect not only what we see but our conscious awareness and conclusions as well. The dust in the spiral galaxy of the overlapping pair above is 400,000,000 light-years away in the direction of constellation Hydra. The dust in nebula M16 is 7,000 light-years away in the direction of constellation Serpens, a close neighbor located inside an adjacent spiral arm of our own spiral galaxy. In terms of relative distance, the spiral galaxy framed in the Window of Hydra is 57,143 times farther away from us than is nebula M16, smaller even than a fly that decides to land on the tip of our nose. Yet when we look at galaxies from this distance, we cannot even see the individual stars because they are so small. So what is inside that dust that makes the Dust so visible?

Distance affects our optical resolution. Our optical resolution affects what we are able to see. What we see affects our consciousness and conscious awareness. Our conscious awareness affects what we choose to look at. What we look at affects our data. The data we select affects our conclusions. Conclusions derived from the data of experience are the basis of all knowledge. Knowledge affects the way we think. The way we think affects what we realize, i.e. what our consciousness perceives as real. What our consciousness perceives as real becomes our perception of “Reality.”

Having said this, I have a question. What is the “fuzzy” Dust in that distant spiral galaxy made of? Giant molecular clouds like nebula M16? But then again, what are the molecular clouds like M16 made of? To answer this, we have to take a closer look at one of those “EGGs”.

June 2, 1999 Hubble Space Telescope News Press Release No. STScI-PR99-21: Hubble Picture Adds to Planet-Making Recipe (Grady et al., 1999). NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope photographed a nearly face-on view of a swirling disk of dust and gas surrounding a developing star called AB Aurigae, which is about 2.4 times more massive than the Sun and resides 469 light-years from Earth in the constellation Aurigo. The circumnuclear disk of dust surrounding the star is extremely wide, such that thirty of our solar systems would fit inside it. The image on the left was taken with the University of Hawaii’s ground based 2.2-meter telescope. The telescope’s coronograph eclipsed the area centered on the star. The eclipsed area is nine times larger than our solar system. The picture shows that the star resides in a region of dust clouds—the semicircular-shaped material to the left of the star (Image on Left). The HST visible-light image (Image on Right) revealed that there are clumps of material in the circumstellar disk of gas and dust swirling around the star, which is 2- to 4-million years old. All the clumps are extremely large, 2 to 5 billion kilometers wide or 14 to 32 times Earth’s distance from the Sun, including clumps that reside much farther away from AB Aurigae than our outermost planet Pluto does from the Sun (as depicted in the HST image). The unprecedented structure in the dust clouds suggested to the astronomers that material is beginning to clump together in a process which could form planets in the next few million years. These observations suggested that the transition from gas and dust disks to debris disks with planets occurs around stars that are 1 to 10 million years old. The article reported that recent Hubble telescope observations have shown protoplanetary disks encircling younger stars up to 1 million years old and planetary disks surrounding more mature stars around 8 to 20 million years old, which have evidence for unseen large bodies sweeping out dust lanes.  

Far and Near. In the distance, each spiral galaxy looks like a spinning centrifuge in which heavy masses of Dust have been spiraled outward from galaxy center. From where I stand on planet Earth, I see asteroid rocks and meteors and comets and molecular amassments as big as the Moon, and other “trace amounts” of Dust such as that rolling Sphere of Time in the distance known as Planet Earth (Apollo 11 view of Earth from the Moon).

Yet, the question remains: Where is all this dust, Dust, DUST coming from? To answer this question with our own eyes, we have to look deep into the heart of the elliptical galaxy, because that is where it all began—in an inferno of nuclear fusion that is burning more furiously than a hundred million suns: the Galaxy Nucleus.

Elliptical galaxies were originally believed to be devoid of dust and to consist only of metal-poor stars, but it has been found that the nuclear regions of elliptical galaxies are metal-rich and contain metal-rich stars and have far more dust than originally realized, such that the literature during the last 15 years describes a class of dusty elliptical galaxies. Nearly half of the elliptical galaxies contain dust in patches or well defined lanes or rings. Furthermore, those elliptical galaxies that have central disks tend to have higher ellipticities.

As I pieced the picture of this puzzle together from an ongoing Big-Bang perspective, it became clearly evident to me that it is the intragalactic dust that reshapes and remolds the galaxies from spherical to elliptical to spiral shape. With the quasar at galaxy center being the site of the ongoing Big-Bang process, there is a mechanism not only for the formation and growth of the quasar’s equatorial torus and plasma jets of particles but also for the ever increasing size of the rings of dust we see in elliptical galaxies, and the massive amounts of spiraling dust we see accumulating in the spiral galaxies. This process of dust formation and accumulation is an uninterrupted continuum! Whereas the ocean of hydrogen being jettisoned into space by the quasar accounts for the formation of the stars and visible size of the optical galaxy, the progressive accumulation of circumnuclear dust is what accounts for the reshaping of the galaxy.

The process of atomic-molecular dust formation visibly begins at the nuclear center of the elliptical galaxy. The explosive Big-Bang process of baryonogenesis inside the “supermassive black hole” of the quasar materializes and forms the plasma torus and particle jets. Within the torus and surrounding nuclear region, there is evidence of both relativistic nonthermal synchrotron radiation and a thermonuclear inferno of atomic nuclear fusion, which gradually grows in mass and magnitude because the region is continuously being fed and fueled by ongoing Big-Bang particle fusion into hydrogen, which is the seminal process that accounts for the gradual evolution of all AGNs. In this violent thermonuclear region at the center of the galaxy, atoms of higher atomic weight are formed and gather in the cooler circumnuclear regions into molecular clouds where they make their appearance as visible rings of dust. As the circumnuclear ring of dust at galaxy center is continuously being fed by the products of thermonuclear fusion and supernova explosions of stellar demise, and as this AGN process is in turn continuously being fed hydrogen fuel from ongoing Big-Bang particle fusion throughout the life of the galaxy, the rings of dust grow in mass and density and spread centrifugally outward. This progressive accumulation of atomic-molecular mass—from particle fusion to nuclear fusion to massive densities of visible molecular dust—is what changes the constituent nature and molds the shape of the galaxy throughout its lifecycle from elliptical to spiral form. The accumulation and centrifugal spread of this intragalactic dust is what changes the shape of the galaxy from E0 to E7 and S0 conversion from ellipse to disk. Then, as the process of dust formation and accumulation continues, the angular momentum of galaxy spin causes the dust to migrate centrifugally outward into slow-moving, dust-laden, star-burst-rich rivers of bars and spiral arms. This growth process from inside outward is what causes the disks of spiral galaxies to gradually grow in dust-laden mass and size from Sa to Sc. As the increasing mass of dust from galaxy center centrifugally molds the galaxy into a disk, the mass of the dust and size of the disk is further fed by the orbiting globular clusters of stars in the elliptical bulge. As this dust-induced ellipticity of the galaxy transitions into a disk, the stellar mass of recycling stars and supernova remnants orbiting in the elliptical bulge gradually become incorporated into the dust-laden, star-burst-rich disk and, as a result, the central bulge of the galaxy progressively decreases in size and the dust-laden spiral arms progressively increase in size as the galaxy evolves from Sa to Sc. Hence, the central bulge of all spiral galaxies is the ruminant of the elliptical galaxy that formed it, which explains why the elliptical galaxies and central bulge of spiral galaxies both contain metal-poor star populations that are at the same stage of atomic evolution. Centaurus A, illustrated in Chapter 12, is a galaxy that is actively undergoing this elliptical to spiral transformation. In other words, the extraordinary appearance of Centaurus A is not the result of a collision between two separate galaxies, not the result of a collision between a preformed elliptical galaxy and preformed spiral galaxy. Centaurus A is showing us a dramatic example of galaxy metamorphosis, an intense stage of the elliptical to spiral transition that happens in the natural lifecycle of every galaxy.

 If we look at the nuclear center of elliptical galaxies through an ongoing Big-Bang perspective, we can watch this process of galaxy remodeling occur step-by-step in proportion to the formation and accumulation of visible galaxy dust. Growing from inside outward, just as Nature always does, the whole galaxy is turning inside out! Spinning and turning its insides out, its Insides…out, its insides—Out!

Let’s look at some recent studies.  

Visibly Evident Evolution from Ellipse to Spiral 

Radio Galaxy 4261 is a giant E2 elliptical galaxy located 100 million light-years away in the direction of the constellation Virgo:

December 4, 1995 Press Release No. STScI-PR95-47: Hubble Finds a New Black Hole – and Unexpected New Mysteries (Ferrarese, 1995). This HST image of galaxy center shows an 800-light-year-wide spiral-shaped disk of dust that was said to be fueling a massive black hole located in the center of galaxy NGC 4261. By measuring the speed of gas swirling around the black hole, astronomers calculate that the object at the center of the disk is 1.2 billion times the mass of our Sun, yet concentrated into a region of space not much larger than our solar system. This strikingly geometric disk – which contains enough mass to make 100,000 stars like our Sun – was first identified in Hubble observations made in 1992. It was reported that prior to Hubble observations, astronomers did not think dust was common in elliptical galaxies like NGC 4261, which were thought to have stopped making stars long ago due to the absence of the requisite raw materials: interstellar gas and dust. However, Hubble is showing that dust and beautiful disks are common in the centers of elliptical galaxies.

Ground Based Optical/Radio Image below shows that the radio jets and twin-lobe radio structures extend far beyond the optical galaxy, which is located in the center between the radio lobes. HST images above and below show the dust disk in the center of the optical galaxy at two different resolutions, before and after the Hubble camera was upgraded. Notice the spiral-shaped structure of the disk of dust at higher resolution above.  

November 19, 1992 Press Release No. STScI-1992-27: NASA's Hubble Space Telescope Discovers a Disk Fueling a Possible Black Hole (Jaffe et al. 1992). Dr. Walter Jaffe of Leiden Observatory in The Netherlands said the disk at the core of the galaxy is tipped about 60 degrees,  enough to provide astronomers with a clear view of the galaxy's bright hub. "The nucleus is probably the home of a black hole with a mass 10 million times that of our Sun," Jaffe said.

 From an ongoing Big-Bang perspective, the spiral-shaped disk of dust in the center of  galaxy NGC 4261 above is not fueling a black hole. Quite the opposite, this disk of dust is being formed and fueled by the baryonogenic products that are exploding out of the “black hole.” The ongoing Big-Bang process located inside the brilliant orb in the center of the image is what is fueling the radio jets and the jets’ corresponding circumnuclear plasma disk, which has to be there even though it is not optically resolved in the dust-enshrouded image. In the circumnuclear region of this active galactic nucleus (AGN), massive nuclear fusion is occurring that results in atoms of higher atomic weight. These atoms of higher atomic weight gather and amass into molecular clouds in sufficient amount and density to become optically visible as clouds of dust. As a result of the ongoing Big-Bang process, the mass and magnitude of the circumnuclear dust in the AGN is continuously being added to. As the mass and weight of the molecular clouds of dust increases, their angular momentum causes the dust to spread centrifugally outward. This is visible in the two HST images that appear to have been taken at different optical resolutions. In the fuzzier HST image below, we see an unresolved disk of dust that was reported to be 400-light-years wide. In the higher resolution image above, we see a circumnuclear disk of dust feeding into a spiral that extends outward into an outer ring of dust, reported to be 800-light-years wide. This is an early stage in an ongoing process that eventually results in the formation of a spiral galaxy, as I will endeavor to demonstrate in the sequence of optical images to follow. 

Extragalactic radio jets are a common phenomena. Galaxy NGC 6251 below is a giant radio galaxy that has both a radio jet and optical jet. The galaxy is known to host a very well defined dust disk at galaxy center. The rate of flow of matter along the jet in NGC 6251 has been reported to be about one solar mass per year. NGC 6251 is a Hubble type E2 elliptical galaxy. The galaxy is located 300 million light-years away in the constellation Ursa Minor. 

September 10, 1997 Press Release No. STScI-PR-97-28: Hubble Finds a Bare Black Hole Pouring Out Light (Crane, 1997). [Left] a ground-based optical telescope view of elliptical galaxy NGC 6251 shows the galaxy and its optical jet. Strong circumstantial evidence for the black hole was cited by the presence of this powerful 3 million light-year-long jet of radiation and particles emanating from the black hole’s location at the hub of the elliptical galaxy. Perpendicular to the disk, this jet of high-energy particles is blasting into space along the black hole’s spin axis. [Right, corresponds to the small inset box in the center of the Left image] This composite image of  the core of the galaxy was constructed by combining a visible light image taken with Hubble’s Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2), with a separate image taken in ultraviolet light with the Faint Object Camera (FOC). While the visible light image shows a dark dust disk, the ultraviolet image shows a bright feature along one side of the disk, which is light reflected from one side of the disk. The bright white spot at the images center is light from the vicinity of the black hole which is illuminating the disk. The article described the bright white spot as an “exposed black hole” that illuminates the surrounding disk, which was described as a 1,000 light-year wide dust disk encircling the nucleus. 

From an ongoing Big-Bang perspective, the “bright white spot” at image center is not a black hole per se. It is a burning Orb! That supermassive “black hole” density is a brilliant burning orb for the same reason that a brilliant star of “black hole” gravitational magnitude is a burning orb, because there is an explosive process going on inside it that prevents it from collapsing. The evidence for this explosive process inside the orb is the presence of the “3 million light-year-long jet” and the fact that the orb is “pouring out light.” That massive burning orb is a quasar! The explosive process is the Big-Bang! The 1,000 light-year wide dust disk has to be made out of molecular clouds of gas and dust, otherwise it would not be optically visible, because clouds of atoms are not optically visible, even when seen as close as the atmosphere we are breathing in and out right now. As previously described, this dust disk was formed by an evolutionary process and systematic sequence of events that occurs from galaxy center outward: from particle fusion to atomic nuclear fusion to cooling and gathering of atoms into giant molecular clouds of visible gas and dust. As this orbiting disk of dust increases in mass and size, the ring of dust will spread centrifugally outward. 

Galaxy M105 (NGC 3379) is an E1 elliptical galaxy located 38 million light-years from Earth in the M96 or Leo I group of galaxies and is considered by some as representative of elliptical galaxies.

January 13, 1997 Press Release STScI-PT-97-01: Massive Black Holes Dwell in Most Galaxies, According to Hubble Census (Gebhardt and Lauer, 1997). Spectroscopic HST studies have shown that the stars near M105’s center are in rapid motion around the center indicating a central compact mass of 50 million solar masses, which they believe to be a supermassive black hole. The HST view of the center of M105 reveals striking detail of a bright point-like nucleus and an interesting dark band like structure.  

From ongoing Big-Bang perspective, the bright point-like nucleus is the supermassive “black hole” density that contains the Big Bang. The dark band is a dust lane orbiting outside the region of thermonuclear fusion that is characteristic of the active nuclear center of all galaxies, including galaxies that are not designated as Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) by their greater nuclear intensity. This ring of dust must contain massive amounts of molecular gas and dust or it wouldn’t be so optically visible. The enormously rapid motion around the supermassive center forces the heavier dust centrifugally outward in the equatorial plane where it orbits in rings. The density and mass of the dust ring steadily increases because it is being constantly fed by the arcs and stars of thermonuclear fusion and supernova explosions that exist in the active galactic nucleus region of the galaxy, which are in turn being fed by the baryonogenic products of the Big-Bang in the quasar, the “bright point-like nucleus” at center. As the mass of the dust ring increases, it is forced centrifugally outward until the forces of angular momentum and gravity are in equilibrium. In galaxy M105, we are looking at one snapshot in time. As time goes by the density of the ring will increase and it will move centrifugally outward as a result, and the ellipticity of the galaxy will thereby increase, and the centrifugal plane of the galaxy will gradually flatten out proportionately into a disk, which is the process that molds galaxies from spherical to elliptical to spiral. When the dust ring itself becomes elliptical, the more massive orbiting dust will break out of the orbiting ring like a slingshot and begin to form outreaching bars which will then hurl their contents into spiral arms, which is how the bared spiral galaxies are formed. 

Galaxy NGC 7052 below is an E4 elliptical galaxy located in the constellation of Vulpecula, 191 million light-years from Earth. The dust ring in this E4 elliptical galaxy is at a later stage of evolutionary development than the dust rings in the E1 and E2 elliptical galaxies above.

June 18, 1998 Press Release No. STScI-PR-98-22: Hubble Uncovers a Dust Disk Around a Massive Black Hole (P. van der Marel and C. van den Bosch, 1998). A 3,700 light-year-diameter dust disk encircles a 300 million solar-mass black hole in the center of the elliptical galaxy NGC 7052. The disk was described as possibly a remnant of an ancient galaxy collision that will be swallowed up by the black hole in several billion years. The HST image was taken with the WFPC2 in visible light. Hubble’s Faint Object Spectrograph was used to observe hydrogen and nitrogen emission lines from gas in the disk. Hubble measurements show that the disk rotates like an enormous carousel, 186 light-years from the center. The rotation velocity provides a direct measure of the gravitational force acting on the gas by the black hole. Despite its size, the disk is 100 times less massive than the black hole. The disk contains enough raw material to make three million sun-like stars. The bright light in center is the combined light of stars that have crowded around the black hole due to its strong gravitational pull. NGC 7052 is a strong source of radio emission and has two oppositely directed jets emanating from the nucleus, streams of energetic electrons moving in a strong magnetic field and unleashing radio energy . Because the jets in NGC 7052 are not perpendicular to the disk, “it may indicate that the black hole and the dust disk in NGC 7052 do not have a common origin.”  

The above disk is not the result of a collision! The above disk is the most recent stage of this galaxy’s ongoing evolution that has systematically materialized region-by-region from inside outward. This disk of visible dust has been formed by the following evolutionary sequence: 1) the supermassive gravitational density within the quasar (“black hole”) reached the Big-Bang threshold (burning orb) of quark-gluon fusion into baryons; 2) the baryonogenic products exploding outward from the Big-Bang gravitationally gathered into a torus of particle plasma that orbits around the quasar’s equatorial plane as a synchrotron plasma disk; 3) proton-electron particles from the ongoing Big-Bang are jettisoned outward at right angles to the plasma disk on the axis of the quasar’s spin, forming the radio jets; 4) the active galactic circumnuclear region (AGN) around the quasar (“black hole”) is an inferno of thermonuclear fusion in arcs and filaments and threads and stars and supernova that result in massive atomic fusion into atoms of progressively higher atomic weights; 5) in the various thermal regions of that AGN environment, atoms combine into molecules that gather in the cooler regions into giant molecular clouds and orbiting rings of dust; 6) as the amount of visible dust continuously accumulates from this ongoing sequential process of baryon and atom and molecule formation, the heavier masses of dust spread centrifugally outward to form these massive Rings of Dust rotating in the equatorial plane around galaxy center, which is responsible for the increasing ellipticity of this E4 galaxy and, as the dust-accumulation process continues, will eventually mold this galaxy into a disk.

It is this ongoing process of Big-Bang baryonogenesis that fuels the inferno of plasma arcs and filaments and intense thermonuclear fusion in the circumnuclear region around every quasar and at the center of every galaxy that produces the massive amounts of atoms that have atomic weights higher than helium in the circumnuclear region, which accounts for the formation of the heavy elements that are clearly seen in the spectra of all quasars, and which accounts in turn for the dust that enshrouds the optical luminescence of the QSOs and AGNs, and thereby accounts in turn for the formation of the visible rings of dust that are seen in the center of elliptical galaxies, including the dense disk of dust seen above in galaxy NGC 7052.

As the radio jets in galaxy NGC 7052 are not perpendicular to the visible disk, this disk of dust cannot be giving rise to the radio jets, because the torus that causes the magnetic fields that give rise to jets are always perpendicular to each other. That means that there has to be another disk inside the visible dust disk closer to the quasar (“black hole”) that is causing the jets. The disk that is giving rise to the jets would be at an earlier phase of element and galaxy region evolution, a torus of plasma that creates synchrotron emission rather than this optically visible atomic-molecular disk of dust. Outside the quasar’s torus of plasma is the region where the inferno of thermonuclear fusion occurs that gives rise to the optically visible ring of molecular dust. So the circumnuclear regions of galaxy evolution correspond directly with the sequence of particle and atomic and molecular evolution, because the regions of the galaxy core are layered from inside outward from particle plasma to AGN region of thermonuclear fusion to centrifugally arranged visible rings of atomic-molecular dust. However, in galaxies at this great distance, all that is visible is the unresolved combined brilliance of the quasar and AGN-like thermonuclear maelstrom at galaxy center and the surrounding dense ring of optically visible dust. In order to gain further insight into this inner region, we are going to have to get closer to what is going on, which we will do when we look at the center of our own galaxy in the section entitled, The Galaxy Center – a Radio Mystery.

February 23, 2000, European Observatory Press Release Photo 70a/00 and 70b/00: A New Look at an Unusual Galaxy (Barthel, 2000). Galaxy M104 known as the “Sombrero” is located 50 million light-years away in the constellation Virgo. Measurements indicate a steep increase in mass-to-light ratio and increasing stellar speeds near the nucleus, indicative of the presence of a massive black hole, estimated at about 10⁹ solar masses. The galaxy is notable for its dominant nuclear bulge and its nearly edge on disk composed of stars, gas and intricately structured dust. Globular clusters of stars swarm in the halo. The optical spectrum of the central region displays emission lines from hot gas which indicates that M104 is harboring a weak Active Galactic Nucleus (AGN).

Galaxy M104 is a Hubble Sa spiral galaxy. The orbital nature of the galaxy makes the galaxy in effect a centrifuge. The total baryonic mass of the galaxy was formed in the “black hole” at center by ongoing Big-Bang particle fusion. The AGN is a region of intense thermonuclear fusion which materialized the rings of dust that have centrifugally reshaped this galaxy from elliptical into its present Sa form. As the dust gradually increased in mass in the circumnuclear region, the growing rings of dust moved centrifugally outward to form this equatorial disk and massive outer ring of dust. The dominant nuclear bulge and globular clusters of stars swarming in its halo are what remain of the original elliptical galaxy, which is the original evolutionary stage of all spiral galaxies. This nuclear bulge and globular clusters of recycling stars will gradually become incorporated into the mass of the disk, which accounts for why the nuclear bulge of spiral galaxies decrease in size as the disk and spiral arms increase in mass.

Dust accumulates over time—Massively—because its materialization is being continuously fueled and fed by the massive hydrogen production issuing from Big-Bang particle fusion at galaxy center. Dust evolves from infinitesimally small to astronomically large, as evidenced by the existence of atoms and molecules and giant molecular clouds and asteroids and meteors and comets and planets. There is a direct evolutionary relationship between the dust rings in the cores of elliptical galaxies and this massive circumferential ring of dust in the Sombrero galaxy. When it is realized that dust is continuously produced in the nucleus of the galaxy, it becomes evident how and why the dust spreads and distributes into rings, bars and spiral arms the way it does.

Next we’ll look at galaxy center to see where the dust is being made. Then we’ll follow the path of dust outward into its mature spiral form. The closest look we can get of galaxy center is our own Milky Way Galaxy. 

January 28, 1999 Astronomy Picture of the Day: The Galactic Center - a Radio Mystery (Kassim et al. 1999; LaRosa et al., 2000). The center of the Milky Way galaxy is hidden behind a thick veil of dust and gas so it cannot be seen in visible light, but it can be seen with gamma, X-ray, infrared and radio. Radio astronomers constructed this picture of the region around the galactic center from 1 meter wavelength radio data obtained by telescopes of the Very Large Array telescope, which displays all the components of the Milky Way’s center region in a single image. The galaxy center itself is at the edge of the extremely bright object labeled Sagittarius (Sgr) A. Deep within Sgr A is the source which astronomers have identified as possibly being a black hole with a mass millions of times that of the Sun. Spiraling synchrotron radiation seems to be responsible for a collection of enigmatic sources known as the galactic center arc, filaments and threads. Along the galactic plane which runs diagonally through the image are tortured clouds of gas energized by hot stars and round-shaped supernova remnants (SNRs), hallmarks of an energetic and violent cosmic environment. There are a number of prominent regions of star formation, including Sgr B1 and Sgr B2.  

 Galaxy center contains the entire spectrum of mass magnitudes from subatomic particles (synchrotron radiation) to atoms (thermonuclear fusion) to molecules (optical veil of dust and gas). If the black hole deep within Sgr A is the site of an ongoing Big Bang, with the synchrotron radiation of the arc and threads being fed and fueled by this process, the nearby regions of star formation show where hydrogen exists in star-forming nebulae, and the SNR show where dying stars have exploded their thermonuclear-fused dust into the region of galaxy center, forming a veil of dust and gas that is so thick that optical light cannot penetrate it. As I look at this violent environment and these enigmatic arcs and filaments and threads, it makes me wonder about the shapes of these explosive structures we see as we move from galaxy center outward. Around quasars and the “black hole” centers of galaxies, there is a plasma torus; as we move farther out, we see arcs and filaments and threads of plasma; and in the quite periphery, the plasma of stars is always in a spherical form. From the violent centrifugal and gravitational and thermal forces that form these arcs and filaments and threads, perhaps there is enough thermal pressure within those arcs and filaments to reach thresholds of thermonuclear fusion in broad and extensive layers inside the arcs. Perhaps those arcs and filaments and threads are made of plasma and the stuff of stars but are in different shapes of non-spherical form due to the powerful gravitational and centrifugal effects of galaxy center. That is entirely speculative, but there must be a different rate and intensity of thermonuclear fusion going on in the circumnuclear region to account for why dust is in fact massively produced at the center of every galaxy.  

Let’s look at galaxy center from a distance to see what happens to this dust from ongoing Big-Bang perspective. Galaxy NGC 1365 below is a barred spiral galaxy located 60 million light-years away in the Fornax Cluster of galaxies.

October 6, 1999, STScI-Press Release No. 99-34: Starry Bulges Yield Secrets to Galaxy Growth (Sandage et al., 1999).

[CENTER] The center image, taken by a ground-based telescope, displays the entire galaxy. The outer blue box in the galaxy’s central region outlines the area observed by Hubble Space Telescope’s visible-light camera, WFPC2 at left. The inner red box pinpoints a narrower view taken by Hubble telescope’s infrared camera, the Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer, NICMOS at right. [LEFT] The visible-light picture is a close-up view of the galaxy’s hub. The bright orb is the nucleus. The dark material surrounding the orb is gas and dust “that is being funneled into the central region by the bar.” The blue regions pinpoint young star clusters. [RIGHT] In the infrared image at lower right, the Hubble telescope penetrates the dust seen in the WFPC2 picture to reveal more clusters of young stars. The bright blue dots (at the outer edge) represent young star clusters; the brightest of the red dots (periphery) are young star clusters shrouded in dust and visible only in the infrared image. The fainter red dots are older star clusters. The caption explains that a barred spiral is characterized by a lane of stars, gas, and dust slashing across a galaxy’s central region. It has a bulge that is dominated by a disk of material. The spiral arms begin at both ends of the bar. “The bar is funneling material into the hub, which triggers star formation and feeds the bulge.”  “This collage of images in visible and infrared light reveals how the barred spiral galaxy NGC 1365 is feeding material into its central region, igniting massive star birth and probably causing its bulge to grow. The material also is fueling a black hole in the galaxy’s core.”  

The bar is not funneling material into the hub! It is exactly opposite. The bar is funneling material centrifugally away from the hub into the spiral arms! The galaxy is growing from inside outward. Everything is going in the opposite direction from which it was thought. The visible galaxy is not feeding the “black hole.” The “black hole” is the root, stem and source of the baryonic mass of the entire galaxy! The “black hole” was formed and is fueled by an entirely different universe made of entirely different substance and energy, another whole universe of non-atomic and pre-atomic reality that modern science to this day does not even know exists: the Pre-Bang Universe of Energy and Particles that gave rise not only to the original Big Bang but is giving rise to astoundingly visible Big Bangs in the center of every single active galaxy in the Cosmos —Right in front of our Eyes—

The supermassive density that gave rise to the Big Bang in spiral galaxy NGC 1365 above is the “black hole” in the center of the galaxy, except that it isn’t black at all. This brightly visible supermassive gravitational density that science has been calling a “black hole” is the most powerful burning orb in the entire physical universe: the Quasar! The visible quasar in this galaxy, which far outshines the stars around it, is so enshrouded in the dust of its own making that it remains yet to be recognized by science for what it is, the nuclear center of all galaxies. The ongoing Big-Bang in that bright visible orb at galaxy center is feeding the nuclear center with newly formed hydrogen, which has triggered the surrounding visible star formation. As a result, circumnuclear dust is being constantly produced by nuclear fusion in the center of the galaxy. That dust has not been funneled into the central region by the bar. The galaxy is a centrifuge. The dense masses of dust are being funneled outward! In barred spiral galaxies such as this, the growth of its dust-laden spiral form gradually evolves from a disk to elliptical ring to bar to spiral arms as follows: during the elliptical stage of galaxy evolution, in the circumnuclear region around the quasar, the products of nuclear fusion gather into a visible disk of dust and gas; the growing molecular clouds spread centrifugally outward into rings; the rings of dust centrifugally elongate into an orbiting ellipse of dust; the angular momentum at the ends of the elliptical ring causes the dense dust to funnel outward into bars; the orbital nature of the galaxy then causes the dust to centrifugally spill out of the ends of the bar forming the spiral arms. The geometrical shape of the ring of dust determines whether the galaxy will evolve into barred or non-barred spiral form at an early stage. When the ring of dust does not form into an ellipse, the galaxy evolves into a non-barred spiral, from disk to annular ring to spiral arms.

Galaxy M100, located 56 million light-years away, is a spiral galaxy like our own Milky Way, which brings us to the end of our outward journey. January 13, 1994 Hubble Space Telescope image of galaxy M100 (NASA, STScI 1994).

 Clearly, galaxies grow! Clearly, galaxies metamorphose into different forms. Clearly, the display of celestial objects and orbs we see throughout the universe are composite and component moments in the systematic lifecycle of galaxy evolution. Elliptical galaxies like M87 grow from small to massive size by the baryonic stream of hydrogen that is being materialized and jettisoned into the surrounding sphere of space that becomes filled with clusters of stars. Spiral galaxies like M100 are molded and grow from a template of inner rings of dust into massive spiral arms by the metamorphosis of the elliptical mass of helium-laden stars into the molecule-laden skeleton of its final spiral form.

And...Surprise. Surprise. Surprise…Here we are!

Looking up at the stars through organic physical eyes that have somehow given us the power to wonder in awe…about who and what we are…and where all this amazing Universe came from.

 Origin and Evolution of the Universe, a Unified Scientific Theory by Paul Hollister, M.D. Copyright 2004

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Copyright © 2004 Origin and Evolution of the Universe, a Unified Scientific Theory by Paul Hollister, M.D.