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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.""
God is giving you the goatse.
Platform advocacy is like choosing a favorite severely developmentally disabled child.
Maybe its a civilization that managed to blow themselves out of history trought an accident somehow? If it is, I hope we can control that technology better when we advance enough to have it.
Posted by a Debian GNU/Linux user
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
I sure hope it's still under warranty, 'cause I'll be damned if I chip in for a new one.
Next time, remove the lens cap.
A million astrophysicists cried out in pain!
-"Where are they John, where are they!?"
*"They.... they are gone Bill, GONE!"
Your theory of a donut shaped universe intrigues me, Homer. I may have to steal it. That's the first thing I thought of when I read this.
I don't get how they would know something that huge... Wouldn't that mean observing it for a billion years? Could someone shed some light on that?
The scientists had just recently answered the bugging question "Is there a hole on Mars?" but now they too had answered a bigger question still.. "Is there a hole out there, in the expanse of the universe?"
A great day to be alive....
Well I guess the ones who used to live out there had something similar like our LHC...
God's just preparing space for William Shatner's ego.
...and it was overlooked all this time. How's that for a security flaw?
Visit http://ringbreak.dnd.utwente.nl/~mrjb/growingbettersoftware to download your free copy of the book
Holy crap, I thought mankind knew everything!
move along earthlings, you are not worthy of viewing this area
is that in the middle of all of infinite space, they've now found space without anything in it? Let me know when they build something exciting there.
Universe to God: I'm holier than thou. I'm the one who pulls all the weight around here.
It's the plug hole of course.
Deleted
..this will help explain what is "outside" the universe.. to me, a hole can exist on an object . in this case, the universe has a hole.. does this mean there is something outside the universe ?
... and I shall strike upon thee with great vegeance, furious anger and a slightly positive karma.
don't worry about it, god is patching that on tuesday.
It's the center of the "Big Bang", if that's what happened. All the material would have been ejected away.
?
What?
...said God, and promptly vanished in a puff of logic.
Ahh - My eye!
The doctor said I'm not supposed to get Slashdot in it!
The hole is not considered serious, since it is not remotely exploitable. It will be fixed in Universe 1.1, which is to be released shortly.
Usage: km/h for speed (kilometers per hour); kph for very slow impulses (kilopond hours).
Given enough time, it's not totally unlikely this is bound to happen, also by human hands.
I blame George Bush.
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
How many Albert Halls is that?
What?
Thats an easy one... if the universe was created from a big bang, then naturally the center or point where that explosion took place would be void as all matter is expanding away from it. hence this big hole is where the universe was created.
"Not only has no one ever found a void this big, but we never even expected to find one this size,"
... but I wish the goatse* jokes would finally stop.
It could be because of the Planet Eater
They wanted to call it Uranus, but that name was given
There really is a Doomsday Machine
What?
How can it not be normal if it occurs in nature?
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.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
Oh no!!! The Nothing will eat the universe!! Quick, take me to the empress!
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
A photo of a hole...in the the biggest emptiness in the universe. I can see that one winning competitions.
throw new NoSignatureException();
We finally found trace of civilization that screw their ecosystem more then we are able to (so far!). When they converted to energy everything in range of 1 billion years for their gigantic SUVs they moved elsewhere. But where did they go? ... Oh... wait...
839*929
So this void is filled with more than average dark energy causing it to expand quicker than other places and thereby enlengthening wavelengths?
That's no hole ...
At the bottom of the
...so that's where my socks went.
The only possible interpretation of any research whatever in the 'social sciences' is: some do, some don't
Cleaning up their lenses? You never know...
There's a hole in my Universe dear Liza, dear Liza
...
There's a hole in my Universe dear Liza, a hole.
Well, fix it dear Henry, dear Henry, dear Henry,
Well, fix it dear Henry, dear Henry, fix it.
For a nice date: Call strftime(3C)!
Fry: Let me ask you something. Has anyone ever discovered a hole in nothing with monsters in it? 'Cause if I'm the first, I want them to call it a "Fry Hole".
---
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!
Good news, Mr. President, they found your brain!
Of course there's a big hole somewhere in the universe of observable spacetime.
The universe is fractal, it's congruent across all scales and infinite in all dimensions.
The galaxies are just like young solar systems on a much grander scale. Every star is like an atom, and every atom is a like a star. Me, I'm a up quark. And root canals are quite tolerable with sufficient nitrous oxide followed by liberal doses of prescription opiates.
G'night.
it's a blue bright blue Saturday hey hey
Universe needs to stop running defrag every few million years, it's leaving giant empty space holes and confusing the scientists.
a giant cloud of ink shat out by a god-squid... obvious when you think it through.
I, for one, welcome our new giant hole overlords.
You guys are getting all worked up about nothing.
Oh my gosh, I hope the Black Sun hasn't failed!
In the wrong hands, sanity is a dangerous weapon.
I see two reasons
1. Its like hole in the cheese. It's big for relatively dense cheese. And its common.
2. There is no hole, but cloaking device. In general there is no dark matter too.
There is a lot of alien life going around lot of habitable planets, but they are all hidden, because they don't want us to wait/pray/whatever for them. They just don't want us to find them too early or at all..
Some other comments in TFA certainly seem to add evidence that is better than consistent with my idea:CMB photons are stretched by the expansion of space thereby losing energy.
-- Our systemic servants do not good masters make.
That's what I love about space science. The fact that you can 'find' something a billion light years across. Like it's small enough that you could losse it in the first place. Like, "hey, what's that over there? That little cluster of black pixels in the corner of this hubble image?" "What, that? Oh, that's just something a a billion light years across that we never even noticed before. Check this out though, I just found a nude sunbather on Betelgeuse 15b."
I mean a billion light years. It's insane. Take 168000 miles. Multiply it by 60, then by 60 again, then by 24, then by 365.25, then multiply it by a frickin BILLION! I mean, you thought it was a long way down the road to the chemist...
Billions of years ago, the Emperor Gortron IV of the Hugalugag Empire discovered the existence of other intelligent races in neighboring solar systems. The very fact of this, the mere idea of other races so infuriated the Emperor that he decreed them all illegal and ordered his vast military machine to wipe them out.
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.
"Oops."
They finally did it! Those Maniacs! They stopped Plan Nine and now they blew up their own solarbonite bombs! Damn them! Now the unstoppable chain reaction from their part of space has started! God damn them all to hell!
It's grit on the telescope. See, the thing about grit is, it's black. And the thing about billion light-year-wide holes in space, your basic billion light-year-wide hole in space colour...
It's where the chronotons were.
"C'mon freedom cage, roll me to safety!" - Philip J. Fry
...Galactus is coming!
I am not an astronomer/astrophysicis, but this is a really interesting story, it's a real shame that 80% of the >filter comments are "Funny".
My Starcraft 2 Blog
I found out what it is that's been driving me mad
There's no room to breathe between the good and the bad
The crush in-between, there's a thin, thin line
But just 'round the corner, there's a change in design
I wish I could walk away
And dig what the preacher said
But those words don't satisfy me no more
There's a crack, there's a crack in the world
There's a crack, there's a crack in the world
There's a crack, there's a crack in the world
Just fifty more years we're all gonna know
Why, when, where, how, and who get's to go
So let's all have a good time before the great divide
'Cause things will start separating come 2025
So look for the subtle clues
It won't make the front-page news
That depends upon which side that you choose
There's a crack, there's a crack in the world
There's a crack, there's a crack in the world, yeah
There's a crack, there's a crack in the world
By, I Can't Drive 55 S/S, Ben 'Wabos' Dover
We need to stop the hole pollution that's building up in space or someday our entire galaxy could fall in....
If we look down, anyway.
It's full of sta...
America, Home of the Brave.
... without pics
a huge invisibility shield!
Didn't we allready see this in a couple of Star Trek episodes?
Star Trek is once again way ahead of "real" science. Why don't the so-called scientists just watch Star Trek and write their books and scientific papers based on what is portrayed in Star Trek? That way we would leap ahead HUNDREDS OF YEARS in scientific discoveries; we'd allready have faster-than-light travel and transporter technology. That'd be cool. I'd be transporting hot girls into my bedroom all day long. Gaaahhhh drewl.
Stoopid scientists. I want girls.
SIG: TAKE OFF EVERY 'CAPTAIN'!!
google space coords plz!
The Machine that created Nothing. Read the book, Trurl and Klapaucius turned it off just in time to prevent the total disappearance of the Universe, but left big holes in reality.
Pining for the fjords
Gosh, this IS exciting!!! So what's coming through the hole from outside the universe???? I can't wait to find out!!
Everything I needed to know about life, I learnt from Blake's Seven
Hmmm... looks like they probed Ms. Hilton's head by mistake.
Move along.
They say the first thing to go is your penis. Well, it's either that or your brain. I forget which...
One of the fundamental approximations in modern cosmology is that the universe is both isotropic and homogeneous over large scales (such as those which treat galaxies as point objects). This size hole s fairly big, and is noticeable on even this scale. This means there could be a special point in the universe, which caused all sorts of problems. Does this mean we have to re-think our basic theory of cosmology, or is this size hole possible under current theories, even if it is extremely unlikely to form. (the universe is a big place, even if something has a minuscule probability it still could happen somewhere out there. Personally I think it was placed there by the universe to test our belief in God not existing.
What they didn't tell you (it's just been discovered) is that it's doubling in size every twelve seconds.
I mean here Heim's corrected gravitional law.
See that snippet:
The CMB is an imprint of radiation left from the Big Bang, the theoretical beginning of the universe.
"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:
Any mass which is situated in the range between the upper border distance R0 and must overcome a very weak repulsion force, if it wants to approach the source of field. Since this effect occurs only for very large distances, it is practically not observable.
And:
Finally Heim found that cosmic red shift too is a result of the corrected gravitation law. Therefore each particle of this world must approach primarily against the repulsive gravitation component of almost the whole remaining world. (This corresponds to the field curve between and R0.) This is using energy whereby each photon becomes longer in it's wavelength during this journey.
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.
It is either in Bush's brain or Cheney's heart.
Homer Simpson had theorized the universe was donut-shaped. Maybe we just found the donut hole.
Reminds me of the 'Vild' from David Zindell's 'Neverness' (go find it at $your_friendly_search_engine or $2ndhand_bookstore), a wavefront of exploding stars which spreads and spreads...
--frank[at]unternet.org
The axoim used is false so the whole statement doesn't hold. I always knew atheists are not real scientists, they just try to use psuedo-science to there advantage, there hate for the creation by G'd is really sad.
...to the possibility that it isn't a hole? Maybe someone shot Rosie O'Donnell into space, and she's just blocking out the stars in that area.
http://xkcd.com/386/
N/T
I have just found a large hole in my sock, which is expanding, I wonder if my socks are an analogue of the Universe. or is it only the left one?
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
..the donut hole.
This is one big gap in the fabric of space. My guess is that this is a time "bubble", problay containing time that is trillions of years older then the universe around it. That is why it is "empty" (more or less).
At least this is a good idea, it is not like everyone else have a better idea on what this is.
From Jack L. Chalker's _Well World_ series:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_L._Chalker
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Well_World
SPOILER AHEAD
"In later books a human scientist named Zinder developed a technology that allowed a human-built AI named Obie to remotely interface with the Well of Souls and change local regions of reality without initially realizing that this is how the reality-manipulations were being done. Zinder and Obie were ultimately lost but human governments later reconstructed part of his research and developed the Zinder Nullifier, a weapon that simply "blanked" the region of space it was targeted at. The Nullifiers were a vital weapon in winning a war of species survival against extragalactic invaders, but when a Nullifier was accidentally used to erase itself from existence it caused an unrecoverable error in the Well of Soul's programming. An expanding region of the universe began going blank and the Well of Souls ultimately had to be rebooted to prevent it from being irreversibly damaged, causing the Universe to end and be recreated."
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
to us as well, once we've found ways to create enough energy to try out one of those neat space-folding theories...
We don't want the Krikkit guys knowing we're out here.
What a depressingly stupid machine.
Oh, how convenient. A theory about God that doesn't require looking through a telescope. Get back to work.
nothing to see here.
If the Hubble spots five different Enterprises by that hole, I'm outta here...
Hmmm.... Could Ross Perot have been right after all?
"What we've found is not normal, based on either observational studies or on computer simulations of the large-scale evolution of the universe"
Normal compared to what, exactly? That sentence reads to me like we've pretty much figured out how the whole universe works, and blemishes like this are unnatural. In grade school, I was taught that the universe is X billion years old. Now it's Y billion years old. We also gained a couple more planets in the far reaches of our solar system since then.
My somewhat-off-topic point here is that there's still so much we don't know about the universe, so lets not get into the mind set of "This is normal" and "That theory may as well be a proof", because the carpet will just get pulled from under us again.
Is there a log in the hole in the bottom of the universe?
So, is this near Uranus? Come on...someone had to ask...
Perhaps this was the start point for the big bang ???
.....
Just fishing wildy here
google "32 trillion offshore needs IRS attention"
What? The plans for the interstellar bypass have been on file at the local office at alpha centuria for the last six months! Its not our fault if you don't keep current with local affairs.
poking a hole in the Big Bang theory as we know it. :)
The quote seemed a little strong... "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. I seem to think from the theory that there ought to be much more uniformity on a grand scale (a scattering into galaxies and such like) and thus no major hole with nothing if all began at one focal point.
For those who believe in a heaven/hell, perhaps a hole in the universe is how one would get there? I have no idea what theological/philosophical types would say to something like that. Other than that most nowadays probably deny the actual existence of either or both places...
This sig donated to Pater. Long live
Not to worry, Nathan will reboot it.
Nothing is foolproof, fools are too ingenious. - Murphy
The scene begins shortly after an alien family pulls off the intergalactic freeway into the void.
Alien Children: Dad, are we there yet.
Alien Mom: Are you sure this is the best way
Alien Dad: Don't get your tentacles in a knot, this is a shortcut.
Alien Mom: Shouldn't you have stopped and fueled up the FTL drive before getting off the IGF?
Alien Dad: Don't worry, I sure there is a fueling station coming up soon.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
This is what happens when you mess around with "Omega" particles.
"I don't which is worse, that everyone has a price, or that the price is always so low"--Hobbes
much ado about nothing.
Now we know where lawyers and politicians come from.
What's in the middle of it?
The radius of a black hole grows linearly with its weight. Think about it.
This is obviously a landfill...errr.. spacefill site for all the waste dark matter...
Would this be a good time to say " Nothing to see here. Move along"?
Thought not.
----------------------------------- My Other Sig Is Hilarious -----------------------------------
Yet another chink in the armour of the "theory" of evolution, and another notch on the belt for Creationism.
Galactic Dyson Sphere!
about anything -- Thomas Edison.
... Apologies. Intoxicated and needing to prove I've read Einstein's theory. Bro, you posted this 6:11 AM - you'd better be over the pond, or a Sys Admin; I can't think of any other explanation to be drinking this early... You don't work at Redmond, do you?If I mod you up, it doesn't necessarily mean I agree with what you've said, sorry.
It was grit. A big speck of grit on the Scanner-Scope. See, the thing about grit is, it's black, and the thing about Scanner-Scopes...
How is parent insightful? Because of some nice sounding sentences?
It's not an issue of intelligence but of free will. Humans have the free will to decide if they go to heaven, or to hell. Animals can't make that decision.
How do you know this? Because some self-referential book told you? I'm sorry, this has nothing to do with religion but rather all the unsubstantiated assumptions that must be made in order to make this statement true or insightful. I count at least 5.
If the universe is "infinite", then there's plenty of room for lots of strange anomalies out there. A region which has nothing in it is just a blerp in the standard distribution of matter. One which would seem entirely consistent with anomalies in random distributions, sequences, etc.
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?
This is The Universe we are talking about. There is no -STABLE.
It's full of st... Oh, wait never mind.
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
It could be a sign of a large part of the universe that has been converted to computronium http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computronium/ using something like Matrioshka brains http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matrioshka_brain/
If the area radiated large amount of infrared, it would be further evidence.
Max M - IT's Mad Science
Damn, that IS huge. Travel a BILLION years at the speed of light from one end to the other. Fsck me...
And I already get goose bumps from thinking about the Boötes void (which is only 250M ly across).
it's the great abyss...
Abyss - Satan sealed
Abyss - Satan released
Note: It's recorded as being opened, then sealed, then opened again.
Did no one think of Battlestar Galactica's void before me?
I cried real tears when Li Mu Bai died.
If you look closely, you'll see the first twelve colonies gathered together in a ragtag fleet fleeing the Cylon Empire.
Maybe somebody invented a molecular disruption device and it turned out to dissipate a bit slower than expected. Maybe it's still growing, dissolving molecules as it goes. I wonder what's the resolution of the measurements and whether we could detect growth of this hole in our lifetimes.
Have they just discovered the aspect of the universe the ancient (and probably the modern), Mayans call the "eye of the needle"??
If dark matter is supposed to be undetectable hypothetical matter, and no other matter exists in this void, then how did they determine that the void was empty of dark matter? IANAA (I Am Not An Astronomer).
There is a concept that using advanced technologies energy emissions will be captured and used to fuel computronium.
Perhaps this 'hole' is in effect an advanced varient of this technology which is in fact absorbing and using ALL available energy in the region. This might be exactly what we would expect to see from a high order energy collection activity.
nt
If it were done when 'tis done, then t'were well it were done quickly... MacBeth
...therefore it's a huge waste of time for me to even worry about it - although if I were a gambling man, I'd bet you would find Milliways there.
That space hole is nothing really. I mean what is the worst that can happen? I mean it is over a billion light years away. If they want something interesting I will tear the universe a new space hole right next to earth. THEN we can care about it.
It is the great Nothing coming...
Hey! Stop copying my sig!!! Stop copying my sig!!! Stop copying my sig!!! Stop copying my sig!!!
"We don't know one millionth of one percent about anything" -- Thomas Edison. Think about it. Light travels roughly 5.8 trillion miles in a year. Our galaxy is about 120,000 light years across, give or take 40,000 light years, and it contains an estimated 100 billion stars (scientists are only guessing; they can't see them all). This newly reported area of "dark matter" (translation: uh, we don't know what it is), is a billion light years across -- a billion light years. Any attempt to place definitive explanations on the origins of the universe, its size, how it is expanding (or not), and what fills it, is an exercise in lunacy. We're like blind people feeling away in the dark and trying to describe what we can't even touch. We don't even know what a black hole is; we're only guessing based on what happens at the event horizon. Science is a great discipline -- I fell in love with it even before college -- but the scientific community needs an enormous dose of humility; and that's not something I see a lot of these days. Every news story that I see about scientific discovery is more often than not missing huge qualifiers, such as scientists theorize that... Think about it. The laws of physics that apply to us here and in the space that immediately surrounds our infinitesimally small portion of our galaxy may not apply in other regions of the universe -- of that I'm convinced based on what we can't explain. It's an amazing universe. Personally, I can't wait to see what we stumble on next.
"What does God... need... with a... space hole?"
We now know where the intelligent life was. The question is, did they leave any research notes we can carefully avoid pursuing?
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
Drat, and my mod points expired. ::applause::
(if you hadn't said it, I would've)
William
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
"You get the idea..."
Yea, and if that's the idea, it's also dead wrong.
You see if "space" was "compressed" the all distances of scale would also be "compressed". In compressed space, matter is just as far as it ever was from other matter. No, that is not what happened during the big bang, if the "big bang" happened at all. No, what's going on here is that more "space" is being "created" between matter as time progresses. The idea here is that space is likely being "created" by the "unwrapping", or "disolving" of matter into "space-time". You see the thing is that it's very likely to be all the same stuff. Matter is just some form of "space" that has been "reconfigured", much like ice is made of the same stuff as water. As ice melts, more space is created between the remaining ice. The problem here is that matter doesn't itself "melt" without some help. A hydrogen atom for example will probably never "melt" on its own. No, there seem to be machines that melt matter called "black holes". It is black holes that convert matter into "space-time". Matter falls into black holes, eventually only "space" is left behind.
Cup your hands together like you are trying to hold some water. The "space" in your cupped hands can be "compressed", or "expanded" as Einstein has shown. It is elastic, and in 3D that elasticity is equal to a volume of "density". Space also seems to be quantum, or has a "granular finiteness" (google on the Beckenstein bound) to it so that you can work with it like "bits" on a computer screen. Within a volume of space, if you could manipulate it like the Star Trek replicators, then you could create any form of material or structure, just like a computer screen can produce any "picture" realizable within the frame of X and Y coordinates. We don't yet know how to manipulate space-time to create matter. Maybe someday we will. Loop quantum gravity theory seems to be a step in the right direction.
"Newer question: Are you really sure we were the first mistake?"
A loaded question: Have you stopped making mistakes?
I don't want to talk for him, but ex director of CNRS (Jean-Pierre Petit) jp-petit.org explains that universe could be formed by two time pannels from the big bang (see his exact mathematical interpretation on his website). Each panels got opposite sign for the mass, and cannot interfer with each other, other than by gravitation. But since a negative mass would repulse positive mass, this could easilly explain the precence of such a big "nothing" (for us). This would divert light coming from behind, and we would not see this negative mass (maybe a huge galaxy). This theory also explains in part the missing matter.
This is going to be a great building point for some new cosmology to come up with a consistent explanation for this. The astrophysics department at my school is really into the CMB (cosmic microwave background, mapped by WMAP) so I'm sure they'll be looking into this too.
A void is not a big expanse of empty space; a void is nothing at all, not even space. You probably aren't gonna grasp this without some effort.
... the disembodied soul of Leona Helmsley.
This sig, aah-ah, is comin' like a ghost-sig...
So that the local stargazer's out there don't get radiation burns from the galacticore rock concert with the zillion starts hiding behind the 1 Million power SSPF (star screen protection formula (like sunscreen, just galactic...)
Okay, more seriously... Here we sit on a sphere 7,900 miles in diameter, deciding that from our view there is a hole in the universe where there's just nothing there -- that is billions of light years across. Okay, I'll buy that -- but because of the distances involved, exactly what is the angle of viewing from side to side on that dark spot. Well, hmmm... it takes good radio telescopes to even find it -- many years after radio telescopes were invented. On the science plus side, it can be tracked during the earth's circuit around the sun (about 186 million miles wide). So the evidence is pretty good.
But sitting in our little corner of the universe assuming anything at AU distances is a rather nebulous form of science, don't you think? Because hey, it's space which is mostly empty, and if galaxy's are moving apart, doesn't it make sense that there have to be places everything is moving apart from. And more importantly, why should we care?
...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
Too much carbon dioxide / monoxide is destroying our ozone... now, its putting a hole in space.
Everyone stop breathing.
Frustrating what we cant know.
Nobody can live Nowhere.
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.
-- Too lazy to get a lower UID.
Having fractal distributions of matter can help explain several pradozes such as Olbers - a universe with a recent beginning explains that too.
In a large fractal universe there can be large holes.
"I wonder what this switch does?"
perhaps this is the origin point of the big bang...
That has a different definition to me, this looks more like just an absence of ' stuff '.
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.. )
---- Booth was a patriot ----
You know, I heard that Reavers spent too much time staring into a void. I don't think it turned out well for them...
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
These scientists have just discovered the belly button of the universe.
the growth in cynicism and rebellion has not been without cause
First the ozone layer gets a hole, now this. Now Earthlings are responsible for a hole in the universe. Dag nabbit, we gotta get a handle on global warming, and put an end to the damage we are doing to the universe.
Was it an Astronomically Significant Star Hole? Or maybe it was the infamous Big Universe Nonexistent Galaxy Hole? Then again, there are some scientists that prefer the Asymptotic Reality Subsystem Event Hole theory.
Makes you think. What if god is a pointy haired manager?
Chaeron Corporation
The statement from the article seems so silly to me:
"Not only has no one ever found a void this big, but we never even expected to find one this size,"
Isn't that like the old quote commonly attributed to Dan Quayle: "If we don't succeed, we run the risk of failure"?
We're sure to find an enormous nebula of chlorofluorocarbons somewhere in the vicinity.
JADBP
Well crap, now we've found the Prime's location. We should probably get on with flying to it and unlocking them from their prison.
(Peter F. Hamilton, Pandora's star series, What I though of when I saw dysonsphere).
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.
"Oh boy! Are we going to try something dangerous?"
I'll have a book out about it as soon as I can find a publisher.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Geez, we have been reading Foster's Flinx books for how many years and books without a conclusion, yet? We should post a guard on his house and ask him not to touch anything sharp or walk up or down stairs! Please, universe, let him live to finish this series of books!
Just like the one encountered by the USS Enterprise . I'll bet if you go inside the big hole, you'll find a glowing purple nucleus deep in the centre.
Delivered to your doorstep it's just the end of the series of tubes.
"(I) have this unfortunate condition that causes me not to believe a single thing any politician says when a mic's on.
Don't forget a liberal's integrity.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
Breaking news, jesus was satan.
Lucifer is a Latin word meaning "light-bearer" (from lux, lucis, "light", and ferre, "to bear, bring"), a Roman astrological term for the "Morning Star"http://http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucifer
I, Jesus, have sent My angel to testify to you these things for the churches. I am the root and the descendant of David, the bright Morning Star. (Rev 22:16). Is he admitting it?
While divination and magic are a sin, Jesus performs "miracles" seemingly at will. Whats the difference between a Miracle and Magic?
Second Commandment: Thou shalt have no other gods before me
Yet, most christian faiths worship Jesus before God. Jesus is the symbol of their faith, not the "True Creator" or "God." Wouldn't it just be a nice simple trick for the devil, whos primary role is to take souls away from God, to come to earth and trick millions of followers into following a false prophet.
I dunno, just an idea. Think for yourself.
crap.
A number of years ago the late Dr. Robert L. Forward published some notions about this Question:
"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 gravitationally repel each other --and we can't see those superclusters because our eyes and current instruments don't register negative-energy photons.
For more about negative-mass/energy theory, you might read this.
There's something very important I forgot to tell you.
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.
I am so glad I found you.....
Lylusay Tateros Volt Sids Lucifer!
Free will is not even a logical possibility.
Either your actions follow from your past experiences and the genetically determined constitution of your brain.
If they are not, they must be completely random.
In neither case you have any free will.
Any theories suggesting that dark energy 'clumps' in the same way dark and real matter 'clump' in our imperfect fabric of space?
I hate Grammar Nazi's
Pictures of the void would be somewhat awkward. But the following outline might give one a sense of scale for the size of this frickin' non-thing.
Our galaxy: about 100000 ly across
Our Local Group of galaxies: about 10 million ly across
The Virgo Supercluster (Local Group is in it): about 200 million ly across
A bunch of superclusters near the Virgo Supercluster : about 1 billion ly across in picture.
It should be noted that voids are not uncommon, but the one in the article is about 10 times wider than a typical (named) void on that last scale. In fact, it would fill the entire last picture. This is one big stretch of nothing on the trans-supercluster highway.
i\hbar\dot{\psi}=\hat{H}\psi
Is the hole a Flat hole, like if you cut a hole in a piece of paper or is it like a crater or a sphere? if its a flat hole, maybe its the wall at the end of the universe?
crap.
So there are plenty of explanations. What the scientific world is waiting for is not explanations - it has plenty - but some indication of which explanation is the most likely. When scientists say they are caught off-guard, they usually do not mean that whatever it is is actually inexplicable, what they mean is that they're in the theorum shopping center and everything's on sale.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Macrosoft declares it's not a hole, it's a feature.
Huh? It's really more difficult to tell whether you have free will than whether heaven/hell exists. If you die and go to heaven or hell, you'll know they probably exist. But what evidence can there be that one has free will?
Well, Bill... get packing, you have a one-way rocket to catch
Look out the Nothing is on it's way! Where ever this stuff appears, nothing takes its place "Not even a hole. A hole would be SOMETHING. No, it was....NOTHING"
The Bible isn't a slasher novel, it's a love story. It's about these kids who run away from home seeking independence and what they perceive as life's true fulfillment, and a father who desperately tries to get them to return. The father pleads with them for years to come home and enjoy the shelter and comfort of his house, but they continue to ignore him until finally the father makes a tremendous sacrifice in order to open the door for them to return. Some of the children realize the father's sacrifice and unconditional love he has for them, and come home. The others continue to wander aimlessly. The subtle, but real, plot of the story is that the father knew all along what it was going to take to be reunited with his children, but he also knew he had to let his children suffer in order for them to realize what they'd given up and the importance of the sacrifice it was going to take to save them. You should read the whole book sometime. It's amazing!
There is nothing inherently contradictory about the notion of free will. There is something inherently contradictory between the notion of free will and the notion that all truth is empirically discoverable.
SIGSEGV caught, terminating
wait... not that kind of sig.
So, this is pretty much a very big "true" vacuum, devoid of everything except e/m radiation. If this discovery is real, then does quantum foam (you know, the random creation and annihilation of particle-anti particle pairs) still exist in the vacuum, thus making it no longer a true vacuum? Or is it really, truly, and absolutely (other than e/m radiation), empty?
I do know everything, just not all at once. It's a virtual memory problem.
Pardon me, but you're full of it.
I'm not an astrophysicist, or anything fancy like that (though I know some), but I do know this:
The best and brightest minds on Earth cannot say with certainty that something like this is "impossible" under the laws of physics, because all we've got is a highly imperfect model.
Refining that model is what science is all about. But we just haven't been able to study enough of the Universe in detail to be able to say what can't be out there.
Anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something, whether it be ego or product.
Dan Aris
Fun. Free. Online. RPG. BattleMaster.
Rupture or intrusion, empty noway, what's there, unknown, it ain't random, gap, opening, disruption, discontinued, why ...?
... a little green feller (maybe a gal) told me all about U-Branes |%~O) while visiting Area 6665169 in Russia.
Under SciFic-Physics:
What if, our "Universal" Domain (we live in, is not everything) has a physics with dimensions (within our TS place) probably unique to all other "Unique" Domains (many external universes) all with their own U-Branes.
REMEBER: THIS IS SciFic-Physics (treat accordingly) - Domains have Gravity and the Field between Domains has Levity. Where/when two Domain U-Branes meet, the Domains' Internal Gravitational and External Field Levitational Forces will increase in opposition until the field force breaks the Two Domain U-Branes/gravity bond. The resultant release of energy could cause the birth of another novel Domain. Universal Domains will continue to expand (exceeding initial energy input from Levity field) until the gravitational bond in the Domain is dissipated back into the Levity Field. The big-bang Newton cosmic egg would be a unique physics domain at the making singularity. If Torus and Omega domains/physics had U-branes meet, the result would probably never produce a domain identical to the Einstein or Bohr Domain physics. There would from the singularity meeting point emerge the new Newton/Infinity domain physics.
SciFic Physics: Einstein/Torus's hook-up with Bohr/Omega results in Nativity of Newton/Infinity.
__ Einstein/Torus Domain: alaxy, tar, and lanet Systems (a Phi physics)
__ Bohr/Omega Domain: alaxy, tar, and lanet Systems (an Omega physics)
__ Newton/Infinity Domain: alaxy, tar, and lanet Systems (the Infinity physics)
NO, I dont' have the math
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
--Douglas Adams
They found my wife's heart! I've been looking for that.
-yeah I'm posting anonymously...you would too.
"Astronomers are surprised by a recent discovery of a space hole [...] What we've found is not normal"
It's not a tumor!
Care to elaborate on what you just said? I don't see which part of GP's argument that had anything to do with empirical truths. Or is the logic faulty in some other way?
It's a "space desert", not a "space hole"! Don't you guys watch Star Trek (that's a rhetorical question).
Wow, that's the first thing I thought of too. "News for Nerds", indeed.
Whats the difference between a Miracle and Magic?
What's the difference between magic and any sufficiently advanced technology? I submit Jesus was from the 29th century and thrown back in time after a plasma bubble in his antimater flux capacitor created a rift in the subspace matrix.... oh, wait, no, I've just watched too many Voyager reruns.
Could it be that we're in a false vacuum, and a billion years ago a civilization 6-10 billion light years away found a way to trigger a vacuum metastability event?
Obviously, it's supposed to be the remnant of a Forerunner Halo ring weapon detonation. It's amazing what lengths MSFT PR will go to in publishing a video game. I'm not sure whether we should be outraged that they did it only five billion light years away or glad they discovered time travel so we could observe the effect in time for this year's product launch.
These opinions guaranteed or your money back.
Here we see the area of effect...
That huge hole is near Uranus !
Reevers.
I for one welcome our new overlords of... void?
Tyranny isn't the worst enemy of a democracy. Cynicism is.
I'm too lazy to bring up the /. story, but data suggests the universe is a hyper polyhedral shape rather than a flat plane, and entering one of the "sides" as a 3 dimensional being would simply spit you out the opposite end at a 30 degree or so offset.
anyone with more time on their hands than me want to fish that up?
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
If this is true, then logic follows there would be no net gain of energy of phontons passing through matter as it would be lost on the way toward it, then regained from the repulsive force traveling away from it.
Additionally, it would force us to rethink the layout of the entire universe, as photons approaching from vast distance at an angle would be deflected in the same way a glancing snooker impact would deflect a ball.
And if this is true we must be seeing everything in a slight red shift since the photons must approach our galaxy (in the case of extragalactic sources) or our planet (in the case of extraplanetary sources.
While i'm not familiar with the theory, these quotes don't seem to logically explain what is reported here. The quoted behaviors would cause general distortion equally applicable to all observations.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
The supplied picture is what I'm saying seems nearly impossible, not the text story. I strongly feel that it is simply an artist's rendition of what it may look like, however I cannot find anything that says it is. The image looks entirely unnatural in origin, considering the extreme scale and homogeneity of the entire image except for a gaping hole. I have an amateur yet strong interest in cosmology, so I cannot speak with the background of a scientist, but I am sometimes able to recognize what is likely a true image or not.
Once more, I have come to believe the picture is an artist's rendition, not a computationally rendered map of the hole, although nowhere does it explicitly state that it is only an artist's rendition. Since there is a different between the TIFF and the medium-quality JPG, I believe that an artist saved the TIFF and then continued editing and then saved the medium-quality JPG. Any thoughts? It's genuinely disturbing if the image of the hole is, indeed, an actual map and not an artist's photoshopping.
Well, the OP claimed that actions being a product of genetics + environment, or else purely random, is only a legitimate dichotomy if the existence of the supernatural is excluded. If all truth were empirically discoverable, then the supernatural is excluded. Since the position that all truth is empirically discoverable is a quite common position, I made the assumption that that was the OP's position, and based my comment on that assumption.
SIGSEGV caught, terminating
wait... not that kind of sig.
It's the Misliks' work.
Laissez lire, et laissez danser; ces deux amusements ne feront jamais de mal au monde. - Voltaire
That's it, a thumb was over the camera lens. Has to be. There are stars and galaxies everywhere in space, we have been told that since the 4th grade.
You get a blank spot when your thumb is over the camera lens. Nothing to worry about, nothing changes. We get hot weather, cold weather, rain, etc. and this discovery will lead to nothing, no changes whatsoever.
Remove the thumb and take another picture, then you will see all the stars and galaxies that have to be there.
(Friday Evening Joke)
-- Rapidweather
Rapidweather's Linux Screenshots.
Ah, OK. I misunderstood. My apologies.
Yeah, I don't know what sorts of computer models they make out of whatever data they gather, so I have no idea if this is an artist's rendition or something more "real" either...
Dan Aris
Fun. Free. Online. RPG. BattleMaster.
No Christian I know claims truth due to mere biblical reference. They proclaim belief in the Christian God, either by inherited teaching ("Mommy told me so") or by special relevation ("I met an Angel!" "I had a vision!" "I felt His Presence!")
Must be one of them charged vacuum emboitments, what keeps the universe from decaying in to total entropy. You've got to watch those.
So that's where all that taxpayer money goes!
Maybe it is not a blank area at all. Maybe it is something between us and that part of the universe. Heading our way? Hmmmmmmm.
Hey God... I mean human... Where do you people come from? You have answers for everything. You don't know!!! Wow!!! There are egotistical morons in this world!!!
Portable Hole into a Bag of Holding?
I told them, but they wouldn't listen.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
...it's full of socks!
You do not have free will.
factory forgot to set BIOS memory hole remapping. unfortunately we'll have to reboot to fix it.
I think you should all pat yourselves on the back for being so smart!
...and do a deep, long exposure of this area.
in your momma!
courtesy Black Sabbath, ca. 1975
Im looking through a hole in the sky
Im seeing nowhere through the eyes of a lie
Im getting closer to the end of the line
Im living easy where the sun doesnt shine
Im living in a room without any view
Im living free because the rents never due
The synonyms of all the things that Ive said
Are just the riddles that are built in my head
Hole in the sky, take me to heaven
Window in time, through it I fly
Ive seen the stars disappear in the sun
The shootings easy if youve got the right gun
And even though Im sitting waiting for mars
I dont believe theres any future in cause
Hole in the sky, take me to heaven
Window in time, through it I fly
Yeah
Ive watched the dogs of war enjoying their feast
Ive seen the western world go down in the east
The food of love became the greed of our time
But now Im living on the profits of pride
I'd have a personalized plate on my car, but "toxic bachelor" won't fit into 7 letters.
There's only one, my friend. "The Christian God is real."
There is a question I would like answered, but googling for "God exists Bible" doesn't give me a very narrow resultset, I'm afraid.
So: Does the Bible state that the Yahweh is the *only* god? The (modern) translated text of the Commandments says: "Worship no god but me.. Do not bow down to any idol or worship it, because I am the LORD your God and I tolerate no rivals"
Which suggests to me that, though there ARE other gods, they should not be seen as more important than Yahweh. Does the Bible actually state anywhere that there are no other gods, or just that they shouldn't be worshipped over Yahweh?
'No rational religion claims "supernatural" exists, that's an atheist slander.' - seen on slashdot.
Could it be that their is a giant space amoeba at the center?
Come on, I can't be the only person who had that as their first thought.
I for one welcome our new dark space dwelling, single-celled overlords.
LOOK. I'VE TOLD YOU BEFORE, NOTHING DOES NOT EXIST. ... NOTHING? /.
Then how come we are talking about it now - at least as a concept?
I'LL SAY IT AGAIN. NOTHING DOES NOT EXIST.
Oh yaa? Well, they just found a load of parsecs full of a QUOTE a "space hole" and there's nothing you can do about it.
WHAT? A HOLE FILLED WITH
As they usually are. Like a double negative. Get your pea brain around that and don't moan at me about it. Moan at
RR
Go on! MOD ME UP FOR NOTHING! /.
Face it!
It wouldn't be the first time on
RR
Huh? It's really more difficult to tell whether you have free will than whether heaven/hell exists
Well, it used to be debated whether we can find heaven and hell, but now that this large void has been found -- it has to be heaven, as in the sinners of history never stood a chance.
Know your pads. One time pad: good for cryptography. Two timing pad: where to take your mistress.
My bet for what can cause such a void is a set of slow moving black holes spiraling like a big drill. Wouldn't try this at home...
Know your pads. One time pad: good for cryptography. Two timing pad: where to take your mistress.
Which suggests to me that, though there ARE other gods, they should not be seen as more important than Yahweh. Does the Bible actually state anywhere that there are no other gods, or just that they shouldn't be worshipped over Yahweh?
Far be it for me tho place God's words in my mouth. I believe that the reference was to other "false" gods. At the time every tribe or nation had their own god(s). The believe was that if one nation overthrew another that in fact that nation's god(s) had beaten the other. These people would have been exposed to the Egyptian gods and would be entering a land that would contain several other gods including the Assyrian's and Babylonian's. So from the perspective of those people at that time there would have been other gods. I think one has to take the context of when and to whom something was written before applying any hermeneutic. Basically you are right the bible states that Yahweh is the only God and that the others are false.
I'm one of the people who don't think God's existence can be proven, but if you want to see a good collection of the standard proofs, take a look at http://www.apologetics.com/default.jsp?bodycontent =/articles/theistic_apologetics/kreeft-arguments.h tml
This is from Peter Kreeft, a Catholic philosopher.
In certain early accounts from the Old Testament, you can see God as the God who had chosen them, but not necessarily the only one. However during most of the period covered by the OT, and all of the New Testament, God is considered one.
Deut 6:4 Listen, Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord is one! 7 6:5 You must love 8 the Lord your God with your whole mind, 9 your whole being, 10 and all your strength. 11
Argue over interpretation if you like, but from writings of prophets and others it is clear that this passage was interpreted as saying that there is only one God. Gods worshipped by others were considered either delusions or false gods.
>The hole is nearly a billion light-years across
We just chose not to see it.
I'm one of the people who don't think God's existence can be proven
:)
:)
Me too, only moreso
Thanks for the link, I did give it a quick scan, but stopped at about the third logical fallacy I found - near the top, in other words
Thanks also for the Deuteronomy reference.. heh, I can argue over interpretation with the best of 'em, and the English translation doesn't (to me) preclude the existence of other gods (I googled for some alternate translations as well). I'd be interested to know what the original said, but alas I don't read any other languages (let alone ancient ones).
If anyone can recommend a good book on this subject, I'd be fascinated; the evolution of religion is a subject I enjoy exploring.
'No rational religion claims "supernatural" exists, that's an atheist slander.' - seen on slashdot.
Could be evidence of an hemogenising swarm
So.
That's where the Federal (NOT!) Reserve (NONE!) System
gets the imaginary 'credit' to plug the SUB-CRIME shortfall!
Voodoo econmics explained!
RR
The inspiration for the "hypometric weapons" in Alastair Reynolds's Absolution Gap maybe?