Tuesday, January 5, 2010

Hectic Fires




The Universe (at least, our universe) is filled with things of incredible violence, where life is not present, only enormous spinning energies and vast eruptions. The center of an "active galaxy" can contain a huge black hole, around which whirls a terrific vortex. And from that galaxy, a beam of hyper-energized particles blasts into the darkness. It's all much wilder than anything a living being could dream of. Sometimes astronomers are lucky enough to see these active centers; other times, they show up in radio telescopes. A single particle from one of these blasters can plow into our own atmosphere with enough energy to splatter thousands of other particles from the atoms it hits. This image is inspired by these active galaxy centers. Its original title was "Hectic Fires."

Acrylic on illustration board, 7" x 10", February 1988

1 comment:

Tristan Alexander said...

Dramatic and somehow Lovecraftian.