Mysterious "Cold Spot": Fingerprint of Largest Structure In the Universe? 94
astroengine writes At the furthest-most reaches of the observable universe lies one of the most enigmatic mysteries of modern cosmology: the cosmic microwave background (CMB) Cold Spot. Discovered in 2004, this strange feature etched into the primordial echo of the Big Bang has been the focus of many hypotheses — could it be the presence of another universe? Or is it just instrumental error? Now, astronomers may have acquired strong evidence as to the Cold Spot's origin and, perhaps unsurprisingly, no multiverse hypothesis is required. But it's not instrumental error either. It could be a vast "supervoid" around 1.8 billion light-years wide that is altering the characteristics of the CMB radiation traveling through it.
looks like they found... (Score:2, Funny)
your mom.
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Doh!
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Do you ever feel dirty for replying offtopic to useless/joke posts to get your "serious" post to show up higher on the list?
Re:Nobody cares, but... (Score:5, Informative)
And the definition of "Universe", from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy:
Bigger than the biggest thing ever and then some. Much bigger than that in fact, really amazingly immense, a totally stunning size, real "wow, that's big," time. Infinity is just so big that, by comparison, bigness itself looks really titchy. Gigantic multiplied by colossal multiplied by staggeringly huge is the sort of concept we're trying to get across here.
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Well we can't very well redefine what everyone previously thought was the universe to a new more fitting name.
I mean look at how much and loudly you all bitched when we did that with the word "planet" so that our solar system didn't contain hundreds of thousands of planets.
Just imagine how much larger in scale the pluto levels of butt hurt would be if we redefined "universe" the same way?
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looks like they found... your mom.
That does not make any sense. How could a 1.8 billion light-year supervoid be anyone's mother? Furthermore how could it be a mother of someone on Earth?
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looks like they found... your mom.
That does not make any sense. How could a 1.8 billion light-year supervoid be anyone's mother? Furthermore how could it be a mother of someone on Earth?
woooooOOOOOOOSSSHHHHHhhhhh!
woooooOOOOOOOSSSHHHHHhhhhh!
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That does not make any sense. How could a 1.8 billion light-year supervoid be anyone's mother? Furthermore how could it be a mother of someone on Earth?
Obviously, it's couldn't be most people's mom. This is about your mom, XxtraLarGe!
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That does not make any sense. How could a 1.8 billion light-year supervoid be anyone's mother? Furthermore how could it be a mother of someone on Earth?
I am Groot.
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"you dumwit"
It's 'you fuckwit', you fuckwit.
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The Great Void (Score:1)
Only a plucky human empath and his minidrag can save us now!
/farthermost/ (Score:1)
Third word in.
Why does everyone love the word further?
Re: /farthermost/ (Score:1)
I like farthest-most, it takes it to 11.
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Stretch it to 2015 and throw in a bit of smoothing. It appears that "farthermost" and "furthermost" track each other in usage over a period of over two centuries, with furthermost always being more popular, and with both being in decline since 1920. Until 2000. Then the usages turn upward. We are an era of "further/farthermost" renaissance!
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Certainly in British English there is no difference in meaning [oxforddictionaries.com], although I gather that in US English farther is often encouraged when referring to physical distance.
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Farther just means further in a distance-specific context, in much the same way as taller, wider, or more voluminous all mean bigger.
It really doesn't matter if you are further away or farther away, but it does matter if you try to raise the temperature by a farther two degrees or prefer taller breasts.
Supervoid (Score:3, Funny)
"vast supervoid around 1.8 billion light-years wide"
Wow, that must have been some BIG super-collider accident.
Other explanations: (Score:5, Funny)
2. Door out of the Holodeck.
3. Kolob
4. Missing dryer socks
5. Where another LHC went "south"
6. Where God divided by zero
7. Where the Death Star exploded, taking out the neighborhood
8. Universe's belly button
9. Universe's tail end orifice
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10. Comcast HQ
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The Supervoid is far too warm to be Comcast-related. Comcast HQ is somewhere in the -1K range.
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11. The shadow of god.
He stood there in his multiverse lab, shaking the tube with that new mixture of fundamental constants and just when he added a spoonfull of antimatter reductor something unfortunate happened and the whole thing went "bang" in a very bad way. He was super fast to duck down for shelter but the shockwave was faster and caught him rolled up like a ball.
Thus the resulting universe has been god-forlon right from the very beginning.
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Not socks. They're in the hozone.
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That would be fucking amazing.
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Except a dyson sphere should have a detectable "heat signature" for want of a better word...
Somebody do the math and see if it adds up.
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maybe it's winter there
Re: Other explanations: (Score:1)
Dead pixel?
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I'm pretty sure they call that "Earth".
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It is the Q continuum.
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Each Kolob-day is as 1000 years of ours, (at least, wikipedia claims that is the description of the Book of Abraham), so a point on its (rotational) equator travels 1000 light-years at most per Kolob-day; that's 9.5e15 km, so the diameter of Kolob is restricted to 3.0e15 km at most, and 1.8 billion light-years is equivalent to 1.7e22 km; so the Cold Spot is ~ 5.7 million times larger than Kolob is allowed to be by the speed of light.
Nothing in the Book of Abraham seems to say that it can
Furthest-most (Score:5, Funny)
At the furthest-most reaches
Furthest-most? When "furthest" is just not far enough?
This is the worstest made up word I've seen in a long time.
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Yeah, it's bullshit-nonsense. Stupidest-most thing I've seen all day.
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Fuck, I only just noticed. TFA is not on some retarded blogger-blog, but on the Discovery Channel website. They have really and utterly gone to shit.
Actually it should be farthest (Score:3)
Furthest-most? When "furthest" is just not far enough?
Technically it should actually be "farthest" since it refers to a physical distance whereas "furthest" means most distant in a figurative sense. For example you say "furthest from the truth" not "farthest from the truth" but "Cape Spear is the farthest east you can go in Canada" not "furthest east". So to summarize: "furthest-most" should not have a hyphen, should not have the 'most' added since it is redundant and finally should actually be "farthest" since it refers to a physical distance.
As for the o
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You have a very unique way of putting things.
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"Irregardless" has also been in use a lot longer than I've been alive, but that doesn't make it good English.
It's a Dysonsphere (Score:1)
Only this civilization was so big, one star system or even one galaxy wasn't big enough.
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At 1.8 billion LY, it looks like even one supercluster wasn't big enough.
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And it doesn't lose suction, not one tiddly bit.
It's not a supervoid (Score:2)
It's a defence system made by hyperintelligent pan-dimensional beings to protect them from super black holes.
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The Star Goat ate it.
It could also be another lens effect (Score:2)
We've had those before, where certain galaxies distort the emissions quite a bit.
I'll wait for the follow up science before I "worry".
Is it a "Structure" (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Is it a "Structure" (Score:5, Funny)
Our universe is interpreted, not compiled. It has Schrodinger Typing: many objects don't even know what type they are until you punch them in the face.
What (Score:5, Funny)
So Dr. Astrophysicist, what's that thing in space?
I don't know but I based my PHD thesis on it.
Re:What (Score:4, Funny)
Poor Me (Score:2, Interesting)
Thought to be a supervoid (Score:5, Interesting)
But this work, which was made public a year ago and just now got through the referee process, showed that there *is* a supervoid in the direction of the Cold Spot. They found it by looking at the distribution of galaxies in that direction. It turns out that it is a big void, but not very empty; more like a wide shallow dish than a small deep bowl. This can both explain the Cold Spot and be compatible with our understanding of how structure forms.
Just more proof that Homer J. Simpson is right (Score:2)