Chaos theory, one of the great mathematical advances of our age, holds that random patterns replicate themselves at different scales; the line made by water lapping a rocky shore, if you could draw it, would show the same density of zigs and zags as a map of an entire continental coast. That phenomenon seems to be at work in the picture on this page, which might be taken for columns of smoke rising from a fire into a still, starry sky. Those are, indeed, stars in the background, but the columns are of hydrogen gas and microscopic dust, and they measure roughly a light-year—6 trillion miles—from top to bottom.
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