Rabbit holes; They take us to some interesting places, cause us to think about some interesting things. With this and perhaps an ongoing series of posts, I’ll bring you along down into the rabbit holes of some of my thoughts and explorations. Oh yes! There will be many dead ends – maybe mazes of gibberish. And for sure, you will learn the true value of the inquiry “penny for your thoughts?” However, fair warning – it may be a highly overpriced use of your time.

In fact, rabbit holes are my arch enemy. I am a victim of my own curiosity. Productivity be damned. Still, it gets me writing, and writing ultimately helps sort out my thoughts about it. Bonus – perhaps readers much smarter than I can point out the err in my ways and correct my course.

“In another moment down went Alice after it, never once considering how in the world she was to get out again.”

Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, 1865

So where and what the heck is GN-z11? Haha, my dear fellow blog reader – follow at your own risk!

Zooming out and looking down

A large reason I wanted to get into drone photography is my curiosity about patterns in nature and fractals across landscapes. This is coupled with my exploration of macro photography of stones and noticing similar repeating patterns. So having a drone allows me to zoom out a bit more than my two feet are capable of.

Whether it is macro or aerial, both involve looking down to observe such patterns. But what about looking up? You start with a starry night sky, or if you are lucky enough to have sufficiently dark ones, the galactic center of the Milky Way. It is hard to discern any repeating patterns. If you happen to have a Hubble telescope handy or an orbiting satellite – you can examine those outwardly details more closely. But then, you are essentially “looking down” again towards those details.

So I began to question my own limited perception of looking up and outward coupled with the minuscule understanding of a singular life form living on a blue dot. So… what if you could get so far away, like the furthest-point-possible away, from anywhere and look outward toward EVERYTHING?

Enter GN-z11

I am already mesmerized by distant galaxies, absorbed in SciFi ever since I was a kid. Forget Mars or our own solar system – too close. I am talking about those billions of light-years, wormholes, and hyperspeed away. Thus the premise is, I would want to go to this farthest-known point, via drone or personally, for my little observational curiosity about nature patterns. So, where is that? I need a map!!

So off to Wikipedia to search for universe maps to plan this little jaunt.

Despite my fascination with these stellar places, a stellar Astro science scholar I am not. But this map helps me in a simple way – I can follow from a familiar “You are here” point to the point farthest away, at least until the extent of the known universe. Beyond that – well, that’s another HUGE rabbit hole, my friend. That point is a galaxy given the name GN-z11.

I’ll have to double-check my drone specs, but I am fairly certain GN-z11 is beyond its range, even with a truckload of spare batteries. To even imagine sending something like a drone to something that is 32 Billion Light-years away, you have to wrap your head around space-time and the fact it took 13.4 Billion years for this visualization to reach us. And how can something be 32 Billion ly away but only be 13.4 billion years old? Well, the Wiki page explains that in relation to the expanding universe. (enqueue future rabbit hole)

So it seems my little trip exceeds the realm of current possibilities. And what if, and I hate to use the word, such a thing is impossible? I either forgot about or never knew of GN-z11 before this “little” diversion. Perhaps only a point of trivia compared to the larger question I was after?

For certain within my own lifetime, I will never be able to look outward towards everything to satisfy my curiosity for patterns. As such, the end of this rabbit hole ends where most of them end up.

Wondering.

** The featured image photograph at the top of this post is a macro photograph of Morrisonite