Ever wonder what would happen if two supermassive stars orbiting each other both decided to go supernova and form black holes in the midst of their beautiful nebulae?
Me neither, but I was fascinated when the images of the Ghost Knot Nebula reached Earth – the above is the most remarkable snapshot of this startling phenomenon.
I say snapshot because the nebula is forever changing in appearance and getting smaller at a rapid pace, although because of the great distance and size of the Ghost Knot from the nearest Earth-linked observatory, a couple of decades of regular-speed video would look exactly the same – we cannot perceive with our eyes the vast forces and movement that have created such complex, looping paths for the superhot gases and dust as that material inevitably is drawn into the event horizons of the two rapidly orbiting black holes.
Nebulae are, in essence, the luminous, slowly fading ghosts of dead stars, and the Ghost Knot Nebula does resemble the death masks of certain galactic cultures while also resembling the masks used on Earth in the 20th century to protect wearers from dangerous gases and viruses.
But that's not the reason this phenomenon has its name. Sometimes, things are simpler than that. Look at what is sitting in the center of the “knot”:
That resemblance of a humanoid face caught in an expression of shock, like sudden death, and the fact that historical references in nearby civilizations show there was at least one planet in the region with sentient humanoid life there at the time of the first supernova … that is what has given the Ghost Knot Nebula its name, as if it retains a record of the last moments of a civilization, like the volcano Vesuvius on Earth covered Pompeii and Herculaneum so rapidly that bodies were left cast in ash at the very moment of death.
Of course, the records also show that the civilization in question evacuated their planet successfully … and by now, the “face” has disappeared as the swirl of gases that formed that impression have swirled on … but, even a space phenom never gets a second chance to make a first impression.
Actually, this variant of the Glass Cabbage fractal we saw yesterday did make a second impression -- I had got it out of Apophysis 2.09 after changing my rendering decisions and thought it was remarkable just as it was, but then I looked again at the center and thought, "Oh, my ... is that another fractal face?" Sure enough ... and, given the way nebula are formed, and given what would have happened to any planet nearby, I immediately thought about a ghost story of sorts ... hence the name of the fractal, although the second impression, not the first, is what got it here!