They were cruising along through the inky depths of space in their trusty ship, the "Pupa." Blasto named it that - probably because to them it was like a butterfly's protective coccoon. Also, it may have partly been because Galaxy Man has a software glitch that prevents him from saying the sound "yu", and has to substitute an "oo" sound. Though the G-Man doesn't understand it at all, Blasto finds it hilarious when Galaxy Man hollers out: "Tally Ho, Poopa!"
Suddenly a red light started blinking on the control panel.
Galaxy Man whirred into action. "Blasto, my good man, I mean
my good dog, or shall we say my good fellow, what's that red light
blinking for?
It says E-J-E-C-T on it. Perhaps I should just push that red button
next to it?
"NO!", said
Blasto. "I mean,
probably not Sir, since we
do not want to be ejected into the vacuum of space and have our
bodily fluids and gases boil off in seconds! May I suggest that
you type 'reset' on the computer." "Hush, young Blasto,"
cried the brilliant Captain, "I just got an idea! I should
probably just type 'reset' on the computer. And Presto! Galaxy
Man skillfully averts another catastrophic disaster! Now what
were you mumbling about Blasto?"
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"Well, just that you constantly amaze me, Sir'" said Blasto.
"Such deaf grace under pressure."
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But another puzzled look came over our chrome-plated warrior and he had to ask Blasto to jiggle his circuit boards in order to remind him of their present mission. Blasto explained that the G-Man had intercepted a strange message on his head antenna (which originally had a nice spiral shape, but now looked more like a bent corkscrew. "It had to do with Red Giants, Sir." Before Blasto could make a tactful comment about the "Red Giant Message," Galaxy Man went into a frenzy. "Right you are, youngster! I picked up a gumballed - no, I mean garbled message. Some astronomers were reporting on Red Giants forming in our Galaxy's Halo! It's got to be an INVASION!! Wake up the crew! All hands on deck! Cast off the stern line! TALLY HO-O-O-O, POOPA!" |
Blasto tried to calm his master by slowly pointing out that they were the crew, and that perhaps Galaxy Man had misinterpreted the message. Of course, that went over about as well as when you try to tell your parents that they have chosen the wrong bedtime for you, and that you should be the one to choose your own bedtime. Galaxy Man was far too preoccupied to listen. "No time for chit-chat, Blasto! Plot a course immediately!"
"Yes, Sir my mental marvel." "What did you call me!?", yelled Galaxy Man. "I refered to you as a 'metal marvel', Sir" replied Blasto. "Oh, of course", said an apologetic Galaxy Man. And then Blasto, who mercifully was the navigator, got out the charts, compass and ruler. After about an hour of strenuous work, Blasto spread out a chart of the Milky Way Galaxy, and began to explain his plan for their mission to the galaxy's halo.
"In a nutshell, Sir, our galaxy looks like this picture.
There is a roundish Nuclear Bulge in the
middle. Farther out from the center there is the flat Disk where the Spiral
Arms are. Globular Clusters are
"little red starballs" that orbit the center, mostly far out in the
huge Halo that surrounds the bulge and disk.
A glimmer of light appeared in Galaxy Man's eyes and he said, "Hmm, when you look at the Galaxy from the side, the disk with the bulge in the middle of it sort of looks like the Poopa!" "Very good, Sir," said an amazed Blasto. "Here is a diagram showing a very simplified side view of the inner part of the Milky Way Galaxy. It does indeed have the same basic shape as our beloved Pupa.
The red arrow shows that we are in the outskirts of the nuclear bulge where the stars are very numerous. That's why you keep bumping - oops, I mean, why the stars keep bumping into us". "Blasto!", said Galaxy Man, "I have not bumped into any stars, at least not lately! We have just nudged a few of their magnetic fields. That's all! Though it sure warms a robot's bot when we get close to one of those blue-white babies! Phew!" "Yah, and my nose is looking less like a burnt marshmallow than it did last week", sighed his canine compadre.
"Anyway, while the stars in the disk are spread out, the stars in the nuclear bulge at the center of the galaxy are packed in fairly close together. And they are randomly zipping around the Galaxy's center at dizzying speeds like 100 miles per second! The bulge is about 1/5 the width of the frisbee-like disk." Then Blasto drew Galaxy Man another simplified, schematic picture of the Milky Way Galaxy as it would look from waaaaaaaay above it.
Blasto explained that the "Milky Way" we see arching
across the sky on a clear night is made up of stars in the Galaxy's
spiral arms. In that direction we are looking through the
disk edgewise. Bright young blue-white stars are concentrated
in the spiral arms and so the arms are brighter than the rest
of the disk and halo. Then Blasto tried to convey to G-Man how
many stars the Galaxy contains. He did not have much luck because
there are 100,000,000,000 (100 billion) stars in our Galaxy and
Galaxy Man's internal computer counts: 1,2,3,many. His multiplications
are usually "many times many = more" and his divisions
are "many divided by many = less. If you want to feel
how big the number
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"Enough bookwork, Blasto!," cried the Captain, "Let's rescue the sucker! Hit the gas! Head for the halo! Egad! Something must have flipped the Poopa upside down! "Chill out, Sir," said Blasto, "the gravitational fields out here between the stars are so weak that there is NO UP, DOWN OR SIDEWISE. Therefore we sort of float in space. You just got so excited that you forgot to hold on to the Zero-Gravity Rail." After getting the dizzy droid reoriented, Blasto suggested a radical strategy for their mission. "I propose that we head IN towards the center of the Galaxy in order to get OUT to the halo." |
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