Читать книгу Dyke (geology) - Sabrina Imbler - Страница 3

From certain angles, the bottom of the sea is almost indistinguishable from outer space. The vast black ocean drizzled with ghostly zooplankton, bobbing like tiny stars. Electronic jellyfish orbit the seafloor like boneless satellites, flecks of light pulsating in their tentacles. Giant, pearly isopods the faint color of lavender jet around the seafloor, their armored platelets clashing together at each takeoff and landing. Violent tangerine flashes of deep-sea volcanic eruptions burp into clouds of ash. A millennium of darkness until, suddenly, gleams and radiance. In this way the birth of a volcano resembles the birth of a galaxy.

When two galaxies stray too near each other, the attraction between them can be so strong that the galaxies latch on and never let go. Sometimes the pull triggers head-on wrecks between stars—galactic collisions—throwing bodies out of orbit, seamlessly into space. Sometimes the attraction only creates a giant black hole, making something whole into a kind of missing. Sometimes, I’ve learned, things just don’t work out. But every so often these two bodies begin to merge, spiraling into each other until I can no longer remember which stars were yours and which were mine.