The story behind M104

"On my last night in the now barren Oval Office I thought of the glass case I had kept on the coffee table between the two couches just a few feet away from my desk. It contained a rock Neil Armstrong had taken off the moon in 1969. It had been carbon dated to be 3.6 billion years old. Whenever arguments in the Oval Office heated up beyond reason, I would interrupt and say, "You see that rock? It’s 3.6 billion years old. We’re all just passing through. Let’s calm down and go back to work."

"That moon rock gave me a whole different perspective on history and the proverbial "long run." Our job is to live as well and as long as we can, and to help others to do the same. What happens after that and how we are viewed by others is beyond our control. The river of time carries us all away. All we have is the moment."

- an excerpt from "My Life", Bill Clinton

I have forgotten most of the rest of the book, but this passage from chapter 60 still rings crystal clear. Nice party trick, Bill. I think the rock was there for more than just a party trick, though. I think the rock enjoyed pride of place to commemorate Bill Clinton's role model, John F Kennedy. Kennedy's ambition was to put man on the moon before the end of the 1960's. Kennedy never lived to realize that ambition. If I was Bill, the story behind the rock in the glass case would be more important to me than the rock itself.

I do not know what prompted H to loan me the audio book, Bill Clinton's autobiography called "My Life". It was read by Bill Clinton himself. H would not have known that I have never read a biography or an autobiography in my life. Nor am I political. Perhaps H offered me the 6 CD set because we had spoken once about how she filled her time in her travels between Manchester and home. Music fan that she was, H did not confine her interests to radio or recorded tunes. H listened to audio books too. She probably wanted me to try a new experience: an audio book.

H's intuition about the book was well guided. I transferred the 6 CD set to iTunes and Bill's story unravelled in 61 chapters over the space of a summer week when company was a black 8GB iPod Nano. "My Life" was, maybe I should say is, a remarkable story. Only Bill can make the traumas of White House life play out like a normal day in the life of a normal person in a normal office. I suppose a problem is never any larger than the bubble you put it in. You just have to stand outside the bubble and stand back far enough to appreciate the perspective - Bill's "proverbial long run".

* * * * * *

As bubbles go, the Sombrero Galaxy is about as big as it gets. Astronomers call it M104, or NGC 4594. M104 is an unbarred spiral galaxy. It sits in the constellation of Virgo, and it is visible with nothing more than binoculars, although you need a 12 inch telescope to see the galaxy's trademark dust ring. M104's scale makes anything mankind does insignificant. I have not researched its age, suffice it to say that the picture here, captured by NASA's Hubble Telescope, is what M104 looked like 28 million years ago - the time it takes for light from that galaxy to reach us. It takes light 50,000 years alone to traverse M104's own diameter which harbours a mass commensurate with about 800 billion of our Suns. If you are wondering about M104's energy efficiency rating, then forget it. Its bulbous luminosity is outrageously over specified: over 2,000 globular star clusters, 10 times more than our galaxy holds hostage. Next, a supposed supermassive black hole at M104's epicentre vents enough x-ray emissions to suggest an invisible mass of a billion Suns. There is more. A 157,000 light year-long halo of dark cold gases, primarily hydrogen, ringfences the galaxy's colossal perimeter. Nor is M104 waiting for you or me. Nobody knows where M104 is ultimately headed, but wherever it is going, the celestial juggernaut is heading there at 1,100 kilometres per second - 683.5 miles per second, according to its redshift. You can look at the Sombrero Galaxy with X-ray, red light, or blue light. You can look at the Sombrero Galaxy mathematically or statistically. You can just look at the Sombrero Galaxy in plain white light with binoculars. Any way you look at M104, it is a staggering creation. Words do not do it justice - to understand its scale, all you can do is try to assimilate it.

Imagine having a moon rock on your coffee table so that family and friends could pause to reflect. It might not be impossible. Celestial fragments fall to Earth daily. I may even have handled or trodden on a moon rock in my travels. Bill Clinton would still have one up on me: his rock was hand delivered from the Sea of Tranquility. One thing I do have is a poster of the Sombrero Galaxy. M104. NGC 4594. U gave it to me. U gave it to me as a remembrance of a lazy and ambient Saturday morning three springs past when U and I sat on a hotel patio by the River Avon outside Salisbury. That balmy morning U and I pored over a book called Cosmos while a pair of swans idled their time in the Avon's dancing eddies and currents underneath a stand of willow. A neighbouring German couple asked politely about the black hardbacked book, about the same size as a briefcase. The front cover, sporting Hubble's award winning image of M104, had caught their eye.

The poster sat in a cardboard tube until this month. Now the poster enjoys pride of place in a clip frame on the wall facing the top of the stairs outside my bedroom door. The picture has a story behind it like the rock in the glass case on Bill Cinton's Oval Office coffee table, and as I suspect is the case with Bill's moon rock, the story behind my picture is at least as important as the picture itself.

This July 20th is the 40th anniversary of the day in 1969 when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin touched down at Tranquility Base. Word is Neil and Buzz were a little short of gas when they landed. Maybe one day someone will be in the area with an oily rag and a dipstick to find out how much juice is left in the tank, and settle a detail for the history books. Within a few hours of that landing the rock that found its way to Bill's Oval Office was in either Neil's or Buzz's hands. Let's not forget Michael Collins, either. I have always thought the most difficult job of the Apollo 11 mission really fell to the astronaut who rode shotgun anonymously in the command capsule while Neil took his steps for man and mankind.

What a perfect opportunity it is today not only to remember those three men, but to say thank you to H for loaning me the book to fire my imagination and which I only returned yesterday and to U for the remembrance of the moment in Salisbury, which together have helped me emulate Bill's party trick in my new house. As Bill says, there is only ever the moment to live in, and now is the time to tie all these threads together - John F Kennedy's ambition - Bill's rock - H's book - U's poster.

Thank you for your technically oriented thoughtfulness, ladies. To bring things down to Earth, I think I will plumb in my new washing machine today. It weighs clothes and has a maximum spin cycle of 1,200 rpm: one statistic at least which exceeds M104's performance. Sigh.