Astronomers Find Huge Hole in Universe 628
realwx writes "Astronomers are surprised by a recent discovery of a space hole that is nearly a billion light years across. "Not only has no one ever found a void this big, but we never even expected to find one this size," said researcher Lawrence Rudnick of the University of Minnesota. Rudnick's colleague Liliya R. Williams also had not anticipated this finding. "What we've found is not normal, based on either observational studies or on computer simulations of the large-scale evolution of the universe," said Williams, also of the University of Minnesota.""
Well I guess the joke is on us. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Well I guess the joke is on us. (Score:4, Funny)
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And you wonder why you're all virgins.
Re:Well I guess the joke is on us. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Well I guess the joke is on us. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Well I guess the joke is on us. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Well I guess the joke is on us. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Well I guess the joke is on us. (Score:5, Funny)
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NO CARRIER
Repeat after me ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Repeat after me ... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Repeat after me ... (Score:4, Funny)
Humility is no longer allowed (Score:4, Insightful)
When you have a bunch of yahoos shouting about their imaginary friend every chance they get, and trying to force their 2000-year-old slasher novel down everyone's throats, it becomes much more difficult to use the proper qualifiers. You almost have to make assertions in that situation, so you don't get shouted down: "You don't know? HA! It must be Jeebus, then! See, you guys are all going to Hell! Jeebus, Jeebus, Jeebus..." It's wrong to state things as fact, but I can't really fault people for doing it.
Those of us who are brave and smart enough to accept the answer of "we don't know" are in the minority. Maybe someday in the future, we can get the God-botherers to shut up long enough to make the methodology of science widely enough understood to be able to speak intelligently in public about the findings of science.
But unfortunately, I'm not holding my breath.
Ya forgot to read the ending... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Ya forgot to read the ending... (Score:4, Informative)
With your above white-wash of the book, I am honestly questioning whether you have read the entire book. I have read the entire Bible (which probably puts me into something like a 10% group). While it does have the occasional uplifting section, the Be-attitudes, for example. But the truth is that the vast majority of it revolves around people slaughtering one another in one grotesque fashion after another. That would still fit with your above description, if it weren't for the fact that it is, more-often-than-not, God commanding people to do the killing. It's not as if the killing is occurring and God is disappointed. No, he is the one either commanding the killing (think Israel's destruction of Canaan) or even himself doing it (the flood).
You should read the whole book sometime. It's horrifying!
Re:Ya forgot to read the ending... (Score:4, Insightful)
Sounds like *your* god has a thing for BDSM, dude.
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As a friend of mine once remarked, "Christianity is nothing but institutionalized Stockholm Syndrome [wikipedia.org]."
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1. The biographies of many 'great' scientists, (selfish, obsessed and frankly quite often mad),
2. How hard it is to get funding for 'real' science these days,
Then I suppose a little hyperboyle is inevitable, indeed perhaps necessary
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Newer question: Are you really sure we were the first mistake?
To eliminate joke, use different theory (Score:3, Interesting)
"How did the Big Bang get around the Law of Conservation of Mass/Energy?"
The suggested answer involves "negative" mass/energy, a thing which is very different from "anti-matter".
One conclusion is that the huge voids in the Universe (there are many many more than just that big one) hold superclusters of galaxies made of negative mass/energy; it doesn't mix well with ordinary mass/energy because the two types gr
hm.. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:hm.. (Score:5, Funny)
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It's the MUTANT STAR GOAT!!!!
Those Golgafrincham's were right after all!
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Re:hm.. (Score:4, Insightful)
In any case, I would not worry about this since we'll probably just be rolled back to a known-good state once the problem has been fixed.
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Yes, this seems like the most reasonable explaination.
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It is the great emptiness (think Alan Dean Foster's Commonwealth universe)
On the bright side, it won't be here to eat us for at least 10,000 years, by which time, Flinx, the Krang, the Ulru-Uljurans, etc. will hopefully manage to destroy it.
Big Bang Start Point ??? (Score:4, Interesting)
Just fishing wildy here
Re:Big Bang Start Point ??? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:this thread is useless ... (Score:5, Funny)
[]
There. I even framed it for you.
If you copy and paste what's in the frame into something else, you can zoom in as far as you want.
Oh, I should mention that it's the negative.
More info here (Score:5, Informative)
More info here (with pictures..)
http://www.nrao.edu/pr/2007/coldspot/index.shtml [nrao.edu]
Re:More info here (Score:5, Funny)
The explanation is perfectly clear (Score:2)
Re:More info here (Score:5, Informative)
http://xxx.lanl.gov/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0704/0704.
Re:More info here (Score:5, Funny)
Pictures?! Of nothing?!
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Wow! (Score:5, Funny)
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I'm confused on one point. (This is not a flame). Why would photons going through a void lose energy? OK, I will accept the statement that photons gain energy going through dark matter, but the losing energy part sounds like the standard BS of baseline budgeting. I got a 5% increase last year, but equal funding and no increase this year so it's a budget cut. Why wouldn't this just be the same thing? Photons get a boost going through dark matter and no
Re:More info here (Score:5, Informative)
The energy of a photon is directly proportional to the frequency and inversely proportional to the wavelength.
Photoelectric effect [asu.edu]
Shorter wavelengths of a photon (ultra-violet, X-rays, Gamma rays) have more energy than longer wavelengths (visible light, infra-red).
Photons that we see from distant parts of the universe become affected by red-shift [wikipedia.org] - anything moving away from us ends up with a longer wavelength that we would have seen if it were stationary. But this can also be caused by gravititional effects (time dialation causes by massive objects).
If the object is moving towards us, then the photos become affects by blue shift [wikipedia.org].
When a spiral galaxy is observed, the side moving towards the observer will have a slight blue shift, because the photon wavelength has been decreased.
The photons in the void must be getting a longer wavelength somehow - perhaps the spacetime continuum is expanding more there than it is where there is ordinary matter.
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That said, the impending close-up's of Enceladus could really turn some heads. Enceladus has a cometary tail of sorts, which is enigmatic to NASA because the only mechanism they know of lifting th
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Here's a higher res image of exactly what I'm talking about. I can't find anything that indicates this is an artist rendition rather than an actual map, other than the fact that they used the word 'illustration' just once on the previous page. Please help me figure
Common problem (Score:5, Funny)
Homer Simpson was right (Score:5, Funny)
The Itching Question (Score:5, Funny)
A great day to be alive....
Well I guess the ones who used to live out there had something similar like our LHC...
A hole nearly a billion lightyears across... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:A hole nearly a billion lightyears across... (Score:5, Funny)
Did they? We're here.
So basically the big news... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:So basically the big news... (Score:5, Funny)
yeah (Score:4, Funny)
Oh dear, I hadn't thought of that... (Score:3, Funny)
Not considered serious (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:Not considered serious (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Not considered serious (Score:5, Funny)
Viral (Score:2)
Given enough time, it's not totally unlikely this is bound to happen, also by human hands.
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Now that we've fulfilled our evolutionary purpose, it's our time to go a
A billion light years... (Score:5, Funny)
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Close enough?
I know it's a /. tradition ... (Score:2)
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Normal (Score:3, Insightful)
Declaring something is not normal because it doesn't agree with our imperfect idea about how things work seems to be the wrong way about it to me.
Re:Normal (Score:5, Insightful)
Declaring something is not normal because it doesn't agree with our imperfect idea about how things work seems to be the wrong way about it to me.
That doesn't mean it's not normal per se. It means that this void is caused by some factor not previously observed or taken into account in simulations, i.e. "If these simulations were 100% correct, something like this couldn't occur."
(Let the speculations commence...)
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Yes, exactly. And the conclusion that follows from that is that your model is not correct, not that what you observe is not normal.
Re:Normal (Score:5, Interesting)
If I may, can I suggest that you guys are not being skeptical about what you're reading? I don't mean to be critical here, but a local source for the CMB would confirm what the Electric Universe Theorists have been telling people for some time now: that the CMB is an electric fog that is generated locally.
I highly recommend that you pay attention to the logic being used at the end of the article:
At some point in time within the development of the Big Bang Theory, it became normal to say that light can be absorbed more by nothingness than by matter. In another article here (http://science.nasa.gov/NEWHOME/headlines/ast22f
So, the SZ effect allows them to explain away the fact that some galaxies are not casting shadows against the CMB. If there isn't a shadow for some of them, then perhaps that's because the photons are being energized by the obstruction. One is left wondering if the nothingness in the void is absorbing the quantity of light that they were predicting that nothingness should even absorb?
But, let me ask you guys this: Isn't it just possible that the cold spot *is* related to the void, and that the Big Bang is a paradigm in its death throws?
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I'd go as far as to say that they're right, and that the void *is* a positive indication that there is a big (mostly and unusually) empty spot out there.
While I'm not as deeply read as yourself in these matters (as your post strongly suggests), I've always been skeptical about the Big Bang as proposed, largely because mat
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Oh No!! (Score:2)
Tell me about CO2 now (Score:2)
I just did laundry... (Score:4, Funny)
Did they try... (Score:2)
One post, two eps, three oblig. Futurama quotes (Score:5, Funny)
---
Fry: So what do you nerds want?
Nichelle Nichols: It's about that rip in space-time that you saw.
Stephen Hawking: I call it a Hawking Hole.
Fry: No fair! I saw it first!
Stephen Hawking: Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?
---
Farnsworth: Yes, we tore the universe a new space-hole, alright. But it's clenching shut fast!
fragmentation (Score:5, Funny)
I know what happened here. (Score:3, Funny)
His generals tried many different approaches but none served to eliminate the threat completely. In fact, often times, the attempt would so infuriate the enemy that they would buzz about the borderlands of the Empire for years on end, death-raying this, atomic blasting that until they could finally be stamped out by the Hugalugagians with plain old fashioned space wars. This only further enraged the Emperor, and so he held a contest open to any of his citizens that could fashion a means to end the threat once and for all without requiring the messiness of pitched combat and planetary siege. The race of Hugalugag was quite xenophobic from top to bottom, from the least peasant in the fields to the mighty Emperor on high, and so everyone turned their thoughts on how to eradicate the menace of 'otherness' that surrounded them.
One day a simple weaponsmith by the name of Nancypoo Gammatron approached the throne with his proposal. This took a great deal of courage, for when the Emperor listened to the proposals of all that had come before, he only listened far enough to find a potential weakness in the plan and immediately ordered the presenter disintegrated. Proposals had become infrequent of late, which in turn further enraged the already apoplectic Emperor when he thought on it. Nevertheless, Nancypoo felt he had a fine idea. His great innovation was all in the scale of things. The Hugalugugians would build a gun so gigantic that they could march it out to one enemy star system and use their sun as a bullet to shoot the sun of yet another enemy, and so on until all enemies even remotely able to reach them were reduced to ash before they knew what hit them.
The Emperor was pleased with this idea indeed. So impressed that he ordered ten thousand of these guns be made with all due haste. And though the Hugalugagians would need to dismantle much of their empire to construct the weapons, including many planets and stars of their own, and it would take millions of years to stage the attack, at the end, the Hugalugagians might finally have a sense of peace and security. Which is really what it is all about, in the end- assuaging the vague fears with brutal violence.
You can rest assured that the Emperor's forces cleaned out their own galaxy only to find the next galaxy over teaming with filthy others, and so the troops marched on, ever on, cleaning out one galaxy after another until any potential threat was addressed, a never ending assault on a reality that didn't jibe with their mean psychology and ancient traditions, until even today. For though we can only see a hole in the universe one billion light years across, you can bet that they've been hard at work all the time the light has taken to reach us way out here in our galaxy, so that even now there is a lonley little planet orbiting around a lonely little star in a void many times the size of the big blank spot we can make out from our hopefully remote-enough vantage point here in the Milky Way.
They DID it! (Score:3, Funny)
I am disappointed (Score:5, Insightful)
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http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=278497&cid=20
If anybody notices it, that one's gonna stir the pot!
Nothing to see here. (Score:4, Funny)
Breakdown of modern cosmology (Score:5, Insightful)
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Isn't that a confirmation of Heim Theory? (Score:4, Interesting)
I mean here Heim's corrected gravitional law [engon.de].
See that snippet:
"Although our surprising results need independent confirmation, the slightly colder temperature of the CMB in this region appears to be caused by a huge hole devoid of nearly all matter roughly 6 to 10 billion light-years from Earth," Rudnick said.
Photons of the CMB gain a small amount of energy when they pass through normal regions of space with matter, the researchers explained. But when the CMB passes through a void, the photons lose energy, making the CMB from that part of the sky appear cooler.
Now have a look on Heim's corrected gravitional law:
And:
What do you think about this? Is there any other explanation for this phenomena?
One more thing. Mumbling about mysterious Dark Mater or Dark Energy isn't an answer.
Stay the hell away from there ! (Score:3, Funny)
Why should this be a surprise? (Score:5, Interesting)
Not only that, but since the universe is constantly expanding and at an ever-increasing rate, greater and greater becomes the possibility of finding big "holes".
Cool, yes. But it doesn't really surprise me at all. Then again, I'm just a programmer so what do I know?
Answer to the Fermi Paradox? (Score:3, Interesting)
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This void is around 450M light years wide. An advanced civilization expanding for a billion or so of years would produce this kind of void by capturing and using all radiated energy for its own use.
Note that we can see the other side of the hole so we're not talking about something like a giant dyson sphere. However your explanation could work if they found a way to do something like remove that region from our universe (thus leaving the hole) and make their own separate mini-universe, one with shiny walls and stuff to keep radiated energy in.
A hole? (Score:3, Interesting)
A 'hole' to me, would make the assumption there is 'tear' and there is an 'other side' involved. I don't see either in this story. ( nor would there be much of a way to prove a hole either.. )
It brought this situation to mind. . . (Score:3, Funny)
What?
Don't cross the streams.
Why?
It would be bad.
I'm fuzzy on the whole good/bad thing. What do you mean, "bad?"
Try to imagine the instant annihilation of all matter and energy within 500 million light years of here.
Right. That's bad. Okay. All right. Important safety tip. Thanks, Egon.
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Re:But how do they know? (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't think they're saying it's necessarily like this now or that it will continue to be like this. What they're saying is that right now, as observed, this region of space shows these odd properties. That means that at the time the light and other radiation being observed around it would have passed by it or through it, that it was huge and as far as our scientists know very odd. I don't think any long-term study of it is required to find out that much.
Re:But how do they know? (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:its the center of the big bang (Score:5, Interesting)
Reminds me of a Babylon 5 quote.
'There is a hole in your mind'
Re:its the center of the big bang (Score:5, Informative)
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Great read for the technically adept layman on what space-time is and how it "works".
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Nevertheless, mathematically, it is possible to have holes in a body without anything being "outside" the body.
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Re:Maybe (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Maybe (Score:5, Informative)
No, it's completely wrong.
Every point in the universe today is where the Big Bang occurred. You can see it right now. Just look around you.
Understand that space itself expanded from the starting point. All points of space in the universe today where infinitely closer together 13.7 billion years ago. The Big Bang did not expand outward into a mostly empty universe. The Big Bang occurred in a universe that was entirely full of extremely dense matter. As space expanded, the matter became less packed. You get the idea...
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I'm seeing nowhere through the eyes of a lie
I'm getting closer to the end of the line
I'm living easy where the sun doesn't shine
One of Black Sabbath's lesser known, but still excellent works [youtube.com].