Even those of us who liked the second Fantastic Four movie groaned when we saw “Galactus.” That’s because we know that Galactus is a miles-high humanoid in blue and purple armor who eats planets whole, and not a dumb amorphous cloud. Based on this news item about a “death star galaxy” with qualities strikingly familiar to some of us who grew up reading Lee & Kirby, maybe we shouldn’t have been so quick to judge.

Here’s the lede in the story: “The latest act of senseless violence caught on tape is cosmic in scope: A black hole in a ‘death star galaxy’ blasting a neighboring galaxy with a deadly jet of radiation and energy.” In emailing me this piece, my wife expressed a special joy at that personification of the death-star galaxy, asking “Are black holes sentient, that this is viewed as ‘an act of senseless violence.’ Isn’t it just nature?” Nature… or nurture. The debate goes on.

Speaking of personification, my favorite quote was this one:

“It’s like a bully, a black-hole bully punching the nose of a passing galaxy,” said astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, director of the Hayden Planetarium in New York, who wasn’t involved in the research.

Just to clarify: Actually, no, it is not like a bully, a black-hole bully punching the nose of a passing galaxy. It’s also not like the oil slick laid by the car in front of yours in the Spy Hunter video game series, it’s not like the outraged chimps that fling their own excrement at gawking visitors to the zoo, and it’s not like the misdirected shot blasting from Dick Cheney’s shotgun. (It is somewhat like the deadly force emitted by the prosthesis on Klaw’s arm, though.)

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 19th, 2007 at 11:53 pm and is filed under Thoughts, Writing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.