- When Johnny Wheeler was 4 years old, splashing in the bathtub in Youngstown, Ohio, he looked up at his mother and asked, “What happens when you get to the end of things?” The question would haunt him for the rest of his life. What happens when you get to the bottom of space? What happens when you get to the edge of time? It would lead him to suggest that space-time can’t be the true fabric of the universe. It would compel him, even in his final days, to search for some deeper reality beneath space-time and to wonder whether, somehow, that reality loops back to us.
- Beta Gruis (stars.astro.illinois.edu)
BETA GRU (Beta Gruis). Below the ancient Southern Fish, Piscis Austrinus, lies the striking figure of Grus, the Crane, that for all the world looks like a great bird stalking the sky. The figure is especially captivating from the mid-northern hemisphere, where the Crane looks to be walking the horizon. At the Crane’s southern end, representing the bird’s feet, are two bright second magnitude stars, Al Nair (the Alpha star) to the west, and Beta Gruis to the east.