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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.""
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.
Not to be nagging, but maybe cosmology is not common as knowledge as you would like to think, references to easily readable information should always accommodate a post like that, or it will easily come of as slightly elitist and patronizing flamebait instead of something useful and informative. :p
www.aleo.no
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
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.
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.
Boy, it would be nice if people could get points by bashing the beliefs of non-Christians on this site too.
More likely still is that the server responsible for simulating that section of the universe crashed and hasn't been restarted yet (or will never restart). The civilization there probably started using too many quantum calculations causing the simulation to take too long doing useless things like reversing encryption keys instead of sending us more photons.
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.
"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.
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?"
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!
I stole this Sig
You FSM freaks, your faith is illogical.