"We love our black hole"

Thomas Wright, "A Finite View of Infinity" (Plate XXXI from Thomas Wright's An Original Theory or New Hypothesis of the Universe, 1750)

Introductory Post

Hello, and welcome to my blog! Above is an infographic I've made detailing the Milky Way as well as the commonality of life and intelligence itself across the galaxy, which will serve as an important base of reference for all else I plan to post on this blog. I won't say much in reference to this image that isn't already included in the infographic, so I'll go on to explain what my project is about, which I will elaborate on with future posts:

In short, the primary focus of my speculative biology sci-fi project takes place around the mid-Centaurus arm, as indicated on the infographic, in a region of the galaxy locally known as "Ruminaaan Space", which is the single largest interstellar community in the history of the Milky Way! Although the majority of these Ruminaaan residents have only began their joint interstellar societies within the past 3,000 years, an ongoing battle has been waging for the past billion years and counting between a species known as the Yn and an entity known as Xii, and while I'll leave more detailed elaborations for future posts, this is a story of a single species divided and disfigured by their own conflicts and the long-term consequences it holds on their stellar neighbours, even one billion years later.

Onto the blog itself, to help with organisation, I will use the following tags on my posts:

#Alien Person Asks (for when I answer asks in my inbox (feel free to send any if you want to know more about my world!)), #Ruminaaan Theomachy (for posts relating to the central aliens of my project and the communities they've built), #Alien Person Spec Bio (for posts relating to the more biological aspects of my worldbuilding) and #Alien Person Worldbuilding (for other posts about miscellaneous or more general features of my worldbuilding process)

Besides transcripts for the featured image, that's all for my introductory post, so stay tuned for more!

{Main text-wall transcript}:

The Milky Way The Milky Way is a spiral galaxy about 100,000 light years across, which happens to be the galaxy in which Humans are located, as well as over a couple hundred other intelligent species. The galaxy is estimated to be about 13.6 billion years of age and has thus far been identified with two major arms (the Perseus and Scutum-Centaurus Arms) which branch off into many smaller minor arms.

The galaxy is estimated to contain anywhere between 100 to 400 billion stars, most of which host a minimum of one orbiting planet. Although on Earth many may consider the possibility of extraterrestrial life to be a rarity, it is more common than one may think, with there being roughly 14.33 billion planets and moons combined which host native life. However, only about 8.59 million of these worlds host multicellular life (around 0.06% out of the total life-bearing celestial bodies), which is due to eukaryotic multicellularity being a very challenging hurdle to get over for life everywhere for a variety of reasons.

This being said, approximately 91.67% of these worlds do host sapient life forms, as high intelligence is almost an inevitability with multicellular organisms given sufficient time, though an extremely lower fraction of these planets and moons are actually home to sophont, technological civilisations comparable to anything humanity has accomplished throughout the past 200,000 years, with there being only 237 star systems with native sophont life (as indicated by the bright white dots shown to the right), and 268 sophont species overall, accounting for only 0.000028% of worlds with multicellular lifeforms. Among these 268 civilisations, very few actually aspire to be spacefaring, with there being less than 40 such civilisations, such as the Jodomii or Sirt, who even have space programs to begin with. Most either do not have the desire to explore outer space, as is the case with the Shreau, Uut, Samrinians or Aniin, do not even have the means to discover that outer-space exists in the first place, such as the Fline or Udrae, who have limited or nonexistent vision, or the Katudit, who live in the subglacial oceans of a rogue planet, or may never leave their home planets for any other multitude of reasons.

While the abundance of technological, cultured civilisations across the Milky Way is fortunately higher than most may be led to believe, it’s important to keep in mind the fact that the space which separates the majority of these civilisations is tremendous, with even the closest being hundreds of light years apart. Despite this, only four interspecies interstellar communities have managed to spring up across the interstellar medium (not counting the Yuruuc, who have yet to encounter any other intelligent species despite how far they have dispersed throughout their corner of the Outer Arm), which is simply due to the fact that interstellar travel is nigh-impossible without the use of warp technology, though only one of these such communities has managed to grow to such an extensive size which incorporates over a dozen unique civilisations; Ruminaaan Space. Ruminaaan Space (the blue area marked along the mid-Centaurus Arm) is the single largest community of interstellar civilisations with the widest reach in interstellar space in the entire history of the Milky Way thus far, with the Boueue and Scerere only having came into contact nearly 3,000 years ago. This region of the Milky Way will be the main focus of my ongoing project, titled ‘Ruminaaan Theomachy’, as you’ll all get to see more of as time goes on, so stay tuned, and welcome to the Ruminaaan Theomachy project!

{Milky Way Labels Transcript}:

Norma Arm, Sagittarius Arm, Perseus Arm, Orion Spur, Scutum-Centaurus Arm, Outer Arm

{Sophont Labels Transcript}:

Scerere, Boueue, Udrae, Samrinians & Aniin, Shreau, Jodomii, Humanity, Sirt, Yuruuc, Fline, Katudit, Uut

By Mikko Lagerstedt

"The Milky Way" by Kush Chandaria

A brilliantly vivid image of our galaxy, the Milky Way, shot by Kush Chandaria from the Okavango Delta, in Botswana. In his submission, Chandaria talks about being able to see the Milky Way with his own eyes for the first time, and the tragedy of increasing light pollution. There are many locations throughout the world untouched by light pollution, called Dark Sky zones. Unfortunately, the lights of growing cities make these areas fewer and fewer. "I can only hope that in capturing this image I can share the same feeling of amazement that I felt when I looked up at the sky that night," Chandaria said.

Testing out animations for instagram and possible future animated comics for the re designed website. Will be posting this on instagram tonight.

TODAY'S FROZEN MOMENT - 10th Anniversary of this amazing shot... March 27th, 2014 -

As dawn broke over the Paranal Observatory in Chile, visiting photographer, Iranian Babak Tafreshi, photographed the Milky Way - or at least the center of it - as it passed directly overhead....this fisheye shot truly producing a moment of awe... Tafreshi is the founder and director of The World at Night, a group of photographers who work to share the beauty of the night sky... a star chaser and immensely talented shooter... his work is life-affirming and stunning… and great for the soul...

(Mary Elaine LeBey)

+

We are travelers on a cosmic journey, stardust, swirling and dancing in the eddies and whirlpools of infinity. Life is eternal. We have stopped for a moment to encounter each other, to meet, to love, to share. This is a precious moment. It is a little parenthesis in eternity.

“The Alchemist” by Paulo Coelho

[alive on all channels]

long awaited sequel to my planet poll, dwarf planets!

the next poll will be stars, please feel free to give me suggestions. (individual stars only, no constellations)

part 1/15: milky way agere moodboard ₊⊹

‧₊˚ ⋅𓂃 ࣪ ִֶָ☾. ˙✧˖°‧₊˚ ⋅𓂃 ࣪ ִֶָ☾. ˙✧˖°‧₊˚ ⋅𓂃 ࣪ ִֶָ☾.✧˖

part one of my new agere moodboard series, info here !! i’m so excited to do this you guys <33 the paci is from littleswitchshoppe on instagram and requests are still open !!

‧₊˚ ⋅𓂃 ࣪ ִֶָ☾. ˙✧˖°‧₊˚ ⋅𓂃 ࣪ ִֶָ☾. ˙✧˖°‧₊˚ ⋅𓂃 ࣪ ִֶָ☾.✧˖

Sperrgebiet by Vikas Chander

Vikas Chander took this photograph at an old diamond mine in the Namibian desert. “Sperrgebiet” is German for “restricted area”. In Chander’s entry, he explains the German diamond-mining settlements in Namibia during the early 1900s. “When the Germans eventually left ghost towns remained, which are still preserved in their natural state although in an advanced state of neglect and rot,” Chander says. His photo features a decayed processing plant from that era. 

Jack and Jill, a Fairy Story by Greville MacDonald

J. M. Dent & Sons, Ltd

1913

Artist: Arthur Hughes

THE MILKY WAY

I wanted to share this even though it's not Animorphs related, because I'm just so excited about it. I finally, finally saw the Milky Way for the first time last night. I'll share more photos on my photo blog when I am awake, but here's the one I'm most proud of.

This photo was taken at... around 2:30 AM ish from the Great Sand Dunes National Park. I was having trouble sleeping (I forgot to bring a pad to put my sleeping bag on) and went outside, and... holy fuck. I spent an hour and a half taking photos of this thing because I was too excited to try to go back to sleep.

It's interesting how I couldn't capture the Milky Way as it actually looked to my eye, though. I got several quick shots, which are too dark and don't even compare to what I could see, but then i also got timelapse images which capture things like colors that I couldn't see. The difference between cameras and eyes is baffling. I think this interrupted timelapse below was the closest I got to showing how it actually looked to me, though the trees are still too bright.

Here’s the photos from last night! The first one is 5 photos of the Milky Way (badly) stitched together to get the full huge view :)

There are a bunch of streaks across some of the pics that I think could be meteors from Persieds (and maybe some leftovers from the other showers last week)

Beauty of Iceland by Cath Simard