Bending This Narrative Arc, Back Toward The Infinite... Hubble Finds Ionized Buckyballs [C60+] In Deep Interstellar Space...

As I write this, we await many important decisions, from the courts, on reining in this near fascist streak in our Executive Branch. That naturally puts me a bit on edge -- worrying that it yet could all could go horribly wrong, for the future of our system of ordered liberty. There is plenty already deeply wrong, now -- witness the Salvadoran father and baby daughter drowned, simply trying to cross the Rio Grande, to what they hoped would be. . . a better life.

So -- let me now draw the focal point of the lens back, out -- toward. . . infinity. NASA's long serving Hubble space telescope has identified a vast store-house of complex carbon molecules, in ionized form, in harsh deep interstellar space. Silently haunting. . . floating "silvery rivers" of them, rippling across hundreds of millions of lightyear expanses. . . of otherwise dark nothingness. This bolsters the hypothesis that our forms of carbon-based life may arise as a pretty common feature, universe-wide. That makes me, for one, smile. Here is the latest:

. . . .[T]his is the first time an electrically charged (ionized) version has been confirmed to be present in the diffuse ISM. The C₆₀ gets ionized when ultraviolet light from stars tears off an electron from the molecule, giving the C₆₀ a positive charge (C₆₀+). “The diffuse ISM was historically considered too harsh and tenuous an environment for appreciable abundances of large molecules to occur,” said Cordiner. “Prior to the detection of C₆₀, the largest known molecules in space were only 12 atoms in size. Our confirmation of C₆₀+ shows just how complex astrochemistry can get, even in the lowest density, most strongly ultraviolet-irradiated environments in the Galaxy. . . .”

Life as we know it is based on carbon-bearing molecules, and this discovery shows complex carbon molecules can form and survive in the harsh environment of interstellar space. “In some ways, life can be thought of as the ultimate in chemical complexity,” said Cordiner. “The presence of C₆₀ unequivocally demonstrates a high level of chemical complexity intrinsic to space environments, and points toward a strong likelihood for other extremely complex, carbon-bearing molecules arising spontaneously in space. . . .”

This is so. . . wonderful: ionized "Buckminsterfullerene", found in abundance -- in deep space. There is hope for us, yet. With Gorsuch now siding more than occasionally with the Notorious RBG in new decisions -- I am cautiously hopeful that if Congress cannot, the courts may yet save the unlikely experiment in liberty. . . that is America. Onward.

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