Rather than comments on Jean Paul Sartre’s Being and Nothingness, which I unsuccessfully tried to understand while reading next to a pool in Monrovia, Liberia in 1968, the heat unbearably baking my brain, these are links to impossible “being”:

• There’s a new star forming about 4300 light-years away, a new super-massive star in our
  
  

  This galactic bubble is known as RCW 120. It lies about 4300 light-years away and has been formed by a star at its center. The star is not visible at these infrared wavelengths but pushes on the surrounding dust and gas with nothing more than the power of its starlight. CREDIT: ESA/PACS/SPIRE/HOBYS Consortia

  Milky way, that’s just too big to be possible given current solar evolution models. But that’s okay, since scientific models must be falsifiable to be valid and since scientists can improve their model by watching the star’s evolution during  the next 200,000 years. Or, of course, they can come up with an improved model sooner, which would be nice since 200,000 years is rather long. Wasn’t it about this long in the past that mitochondrial Eve began our current human race?

  and to nothingness:

• And Canadian poet Tom Wayman has formulated an answer to the student who asks, after missing a class, whether anything happened that involves nothingness and everythingness:

DID I MISS ANYTHING?

Tom Wayman
From: The Astonishing Weight of the Dead. Vancouver: Polestar, 1994.

Question frequently asked by
students after missing a class

Nothing. When we realized you weren’t here
we sat with our hands folded on our desks
in silence, for the full two hours

Everything. I gave an exam worth
40 per cent of the grade for this term
and assigned some reading due today
on which I’m about to hand out a quiz
worth 50 per cent

Nothing. None of the content of this course
has value or meaning
Take as many days off as you like:
any activities we undertake as a class
I assure you will not matter either to you or me
and are without purpose

Everything. A few minutes after we began last time
a shaft of light descended and an angel
or other heavenly being appeared
and revealed to us what each woman or man must do
to attain divine wisdom in this life and
the hereafter
This is the last time the class will meet
before we disperse to bring this good news to all people
on earth

Nothing. When you are not present
how could something significant occur?

Everything. Contained in this classroom
is a microcosm of human existence
assembled for you to query and examine and ponder
This is not the only place such an opportunity has been
gathered

but it was one place

And you weren’t here

The upside to the ever worsening drought is a clear evening sky that was spectacular last night, with Venus in the southwest above a waxing moon that will be full on February 2. If tonight matches predictions and is cloudless as well, the scene should be repeated at sunset with the moon above Venus until about 10 when they’ll both have dropped below the horizon.

The first chapter of the 8th edition of Discovering the Universe is now available online. The books should be available in the bookstore by Tuesday.