Astronomers Find Huge Hole in Universe

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.""

More info here

[Mr Europe]

Now this is *big* news ! The scientific world is waiting for good explanations.

More info here (with pictures..)
http://www.nrao.edu/pr/2007/coldspot/index.shtml [nrao.edu]

Re:More info here

[Randomly]

Here's a link to the original paper:

http://xxx.lanl.gov/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0704/0704.0 908v2.pdf [lanl.gov]

Re:A billion light years...

[aproposofwhat]

Approximately 8.46805334003712 x 10^69, assuming a volume of 3.5 million cubic feet for the Albert Hall (source (pdf) [friendsofed.com]).

Close enough?

Re:its the center of the big bang

[Jugalator]

Yep, and if that gives one a big "huh!" look, the idea is that space expands by increasing the distance between matter [wikipedia.org], "stretching" spacetime itself, and doesn't expand inside something. There is no "something" on the outside, not even vacuum, because vacuum is a lack of matter, not a lack of spacetime. So it's a bit like a surface of a balloon expanding if you blow it up (= big bang), and wherever you go on that surface, you are always at the "center" from your point of view.

Re:Maybe

[Anonymous Coward]

Any paper on that subject would be rejected for publication. There is no specific location where the Big Bang occured, as at that time there were no distances and no distinguishable locations. You seem to be thinking of the Big Bang as an explosion of matter expanding outward into a pre-existing empty void. This is false. Imagine ants crawling on an expanding balloon saying "Gee, I wonder where on the surface of this balloon the Big Blow happened?" Your question is nonsensical in the same way. (Well, nearly the same way. Because if the ants discovered their balloon is embedded in 3d world, they could probably deduce where in 3d space the expansion started. We have no reason to suspect our spacetime manifold is embedded in any higher space, as the 2d manifold of a balloon is in our space.)

Re:Maybe

[osu-neko]

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...

Re:But how do they know?

[AlecC]

Not. It says that the only thing you can say is that you perceive them as happening right now, but you know they happened at different times in the past. A different observer would not certainly not perceive the same simultaneity - obviously, because they are in a differnt place so would have different speed-of-light delays. But if they worked back to when the supernovae "really" happened, they would not necessarily see the suparnovae being the same time-distance away, or with the same time-distance between them.

Re:its the center of the big bang

[eggoeater]

For an excellent discussion on the topic of space-time, pick up Brian Greene's The Fabric of the Cosmos. [wikipedia.org]
Great read for the technically adept layman on what space-time is and how it "works".

Re:More info here

[pln2bz]

What most people on Slashdot do not realize is that the evidence for EU Theory spans multiple disciplines while simultaneously maintaining internal consistency across completely unrelated fields. It's going to take decades for people to realize and accept this. We are at the very beginning of a transition point.

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 that material up into the atmosphere is ice geysers resulting from tidal heating. The problem is that the tidal heating appears to only be restricted to the southern hemisphere. So, I believe that Cassini is capturing images right about now of this mysterious uplift of material. NASA will quite certainly find that the material is being uplifted along the Tiger Stripe rilles that criss-cross that planet, as a result of electrical machining. The explanation is here:

http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2006/arch06/0603 13moonjets.htm [thunderbolts.info]

What's pretty silly, actually, is that if you watch NASA's video of Enceladus' jet, and focus on the shadow line during the animation, you will very clearly observe the jets remain stationary as the planetary features rotate ...

http://www.nasa.gov/mov/139185main_PIA07762_full_m ovie.mov [nasa.gov]

It should be very obvious if we're seeing more electrical plasma activity in our solar system because the arc points should be very hot point sources -- unlike any of NASA's preferred theories. My guess is that they will have to advocate the existence of wandering hot ice geysers! People are paying so little attention these days that, to be honest, I suspect they could get away with it.

But what's also really silly about this whole thing is their response to the observation that Enceladus' poles are warmer than its equator. This is not all that unusual within EU Theory, and they've seen it before on other planets and moons where the plasmas are electrically active. There's a lot of strong evidence that something similar used to even be true for Earth -- explaining why we see things like croc bones and ancient coral reefs at nearly all latituides of the Earth for past ages of the Earth. After a while, one would think they would stop being surprised by these sorts of things.

Re:hm..

[jimstapleton]

Unfortunately, I think your view is way too optimistic :-(

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.

Re:More info here

[mikael]

I'm confused on one point. (This is not a flame). Why would photons going through a void lose energy?

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.

Re:More info here

[Anonymous Coward]

The entire final version of the article is here:
http://arxiv.org/abs/0704.0908 [arxiv.org]

Re:Repeat after me ...

[shawn(at)fsu]

Actually the article said it was devoid of "dark matter", they freely admit they have no idea what this void is.

Re:Big Bang Start Point ???

[eddy the lip]

Yes, but you are also sitting at the start point of the big bang. Every spot in the universe can make the same claim. "Big bang" is a cool name for it, but it's a bit of a misnomer, as there wasn't anywhere for an actual explosion to occur when it happened. Thinking of the big bang as having a point of origin is a bit like asking "what's outside the universe?" Just as with Oakland, there's no there there. I'd recommend Brian Green's The Elegeant Universe. It's focus is string theory, but to get there you have to go through relativity, the big bang theory and quantum mechanics, as they're all related. He's a gifted science writer and ties it all together in a very accessible way.

Re:Well I guess the joke is on us.

[R2.0]

Be sure to look at the whole "first goatse" set - he has one of Ron Jeremy looking at it.

Re:So THAT is where they went!

[R2.0]

Don't forget a liberal's integrity.

Re:Ya forgot to read the ending...

[jinxidoru]

I love that the title of your comment is "Ya forgot to read the ending..." The ending of the Bible is Revelations. That's a pretty convoluted book that does more resemble a slasher novel than a love story. It makes a fitting end to the Bible.

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!