Sharpless 2-240, aka Simeis 147, aka the Spaghetti Nebula is a supernova remnant about 3,000 light-years away located on the border between the constellations of Taurus and Auriga. It’s really big (about 36 times the area of the full moon) and extremely faint.
In four billion years, there have been many continents that died.
You’ve heard of the famous ones–Pangaea, proud monolith; Laurasia, home of dinosaurs–but there were others, so many, many others. The grand march of time swallowed islands whole, scraped them up like residue from the baking pan of the world.
Everything has a soul. Everything remembers.
Gondwana floats gently over London now, remembering when the world was hot and green. She loves the lights. There were no lights, when she was alive. There were no lights when the world was so hot and green.
Rodinia settles onto the dry Atacama, bringing moisture from the sea. She moves much faster now, unhindered by gravity and friction, slipping through the walls of this new house. The walls are always moving, yet she stays, floating in and out, bringing moisture.
Vaalbara, eldest and most fire-born, sneaks in tendrils and wisps over her old haunting grounds. Her bones are buried in the outback, ancient cratons resting unrotted through all the fearsome gnawing of time. She likes the summers here. The heat reminds her, so faintly, of what it was like to be born. In the wildfires, she sees the magma oceans of her youth.
