Local Observation / THE LAW OF CLUSTERS

One of the enduring puzzles of astrophysics is how mass is distributed among a population of stars at their birth.

If humans are the stars and mass is good fortune, then yes, how is it distributed? Clunkily, is the answer. Or with luck if you want a glass half full view point.

Astronomers wade deep into theory, clamoring for the need for ‘next-generation’ telescopes and whatnot suggesting answers are only out of reach of our current technology.

Thereby neatly side-stepping the obvious conclusion which is there is no universal understanding for clusters of any age.

But you feel ‘em. I know I got royally ‘Clustered’ in September. All I did to provoke cataclysmic change, inadvertently, because that’s the point here, the clustering happeneth whether you like it or not, was to make some plans. I had tempted fate. I had taken on the Laws of Physics with my audacity.

If I could make a histogram of the stellar masses that make up the ravages of even a single day you’d see rectangles in tangles.

No universally agreed upon descriptive exists for such a collision of logic and illogic.

The scientists’ findings demonstrate the weaknesses of man. We want answers when we keep changing the question.

When I was ‘Clustered’ in September, one by one my intentions were rent asunder, I cancelled work engagements, I cancelled my hopes of reaching distant Serbia for the wedding of cousins, and then I was cancelling all my utilities accounts at my former residence in Key West, Florida which was unluckily blown away in a storm.

Luckily, one might say, I was not home at the time. I was safe, in Alabama, waiting on news. News which dribbled in and always changed and always a smidge for the worse.

Luckily, by any standard, a friend, a real-life fairy princess with a heart of gold sent word she had a room for me. Yes said I. From my new view I sip from the glass half full. Gratefully unclustered.