#4209

Damn, Jane. For someone who supposedly 'doesn't believe in Sburb', you sure are retaining a lot of its lore.

She might not be ready to accept it just yet - but her hindbrain is still taking it all in. She has understanding, without belief...

...and Jake has belief, without understanding.

GG: I explored the moon, and began to notice people gathering in the streets. GG: But they weren't human. They were funny looking, perfectly white creatures. […] GG: The more closely I observed, the more they appeared somewhat despondent. […] GG: I determined they were in mourning, actually.

Don't tell me the Queen is already dead? I guess that's not impossible, given that we've already seen multiple anti-monarchist Carapacians, but it is weird. I mean, technically, this session doesn't even exist yet.

Wait.

...she didn't actually say that Jake was sleeping, did she?

GG: "The Page is dead." GG: "Our hope is lost."

GG: Jake. GG: The Page was you.

A pre-session death, just like Aradia.

Aradia, far as I can tell, was down a Dream Self because her realself was murdered before she'd Entered. Jake's realself is fine, though, so I think that this time, the damage was on the Prospit end of the connection.

Who would be motivated to attack a Dream Self before the session? Who would even be able to? Derse certainly wouldn't - that has to be against the rules - and Jack shouldn't have had any reason to go off-script just yet.

In a pre-initialized Medium, the Carapacians have no war to fight, locked in an eternal stalemate as they are. The Underlings, as far as I'm aware, only spawn on Lands, and the Denizens haven't even been instantiated yet.

In a pre-initialized Medium, the only agents who could act unpredictably...

Seeing double

In this new Hubble image two objects are clearly visible, shining brightly. When they were first discovered in 1979, they were thought to be separate objects — however, astronomers soon realised that these twins are a little too identical! They are close together, lie at the same distance from us, and have surprisingly similar properties. The reason they are so similar is not some bizarre coincidence; they are in fact the same object.

These cosmic doppelgangers make up a double quasar known as QSO 0957+561, also known as the "Twin Quasar", which lies just under 14 billion light-years from Earth. Quasars are the intensely powerful centres of distant galaxies. So, why are we seeing this quasar twice?

Some 4 billion light-years from Earth — and directly in our line of sight — is the huge galaxy YGKOW G1. This galaxy was the first ever observed gravitational lens, an object with a mass so great that it can bend the light from objects lying behind it. This phenomenon not only allows us to see objects that would otherwise be too remote, in cases like this it also allows us to see them twice over.

Along with the cluster of galaxies in which it resides, YGKOW G1 exerts an enormous gravitational force. This doesn't just affect the galaxy's shape, the stars that it forms, and the objects around it — it affects the very space it sits in, warping and bending the environment and producing bizarre effects, such as this quasar double image.

This observation of gravitational lensing, the first of its kind, meant more than just the discovery of an impressive optical illusion allowing telescopes like Hubble to effectively see behind an intervening galaxy. It was evidence for Einstein's theory of general relativity. This theory had identified gravitational lensing as one of its only observable effects, but until this observation no such lensing had been observed since the idea was first mooted in 1936.

Links:

ESA/Hubble release: Gravitational telescope creates space invader mirage

ESA/Hubble release: Lenses galore — Hubble finds large sample of very distant galaxies

ESA/Hubble release: Hubble finds double Einstein ring