Slashdot Mirror
"Dark Flow" Outside Observable Universe
DynaSoar writes "NASA astrophysicists have discovered what they claim is something outside the observable universe exerting an effect on the observable. The material is pulling clusters of galaxies towards a region of space known not to contain sufficient matter to create the effect. They can only speculate on what the material is and how space might differ there: 'In these regions, space-time might be very different, and likely doesn't contain stars and galaxies (which only formed because of the particular density pattern of mass in our bubble). It could include giant, massive structures much larger than anything in our own observable universe. These structures are what researchers suspect are tugging on the galaxy clusters, causing the dark flow.'"
Now I feel even smaller than I did yesterday. Good job, science!
Then are we also looking at near the time of the big bang?
and it is the weight of the undead that is pulling us that way. only in space noone can hear them scream.
We are going to continue to find things that we don't know about, because the Universe goes forever. Let me repeat that, FOREVER. Just because there may be an edge to what we think the Universe is doesn't mean that things just end there. It isn't rocket surgery, it is logic. If the known universe is expanding outward, that means that it has to have someplace to go, right?
Or am I just high right now?
I had heard from LiveScience that someone had been speculating our universe was shaped like a higher dimensional torus. Isn't there a type of hyperdimensional torus with a very small hole that kind of looks like a cushion (the middle one)? Maybe that could cause material to flow to a central point while the torus expands.
Also, if a 3D universe is projected as a surface of a 3D figure, be it sphere, cylinder, torus, or the friendly dodecahedron, would there be any places that could lead to the core?
Years of watching slashdot paid off in a truly interesting story
Yes and the editors missed the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to run it under the heading "NASA SCIENTISTS DISCOVER GOD." Damn!
Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security. --Edmund Burke
But I'd say if lots of really big things are being affected, then there could be a bigger thing out there.
It's a theory I know. I'd like to call it Cen's Big Fucking Thing theory, it's a big ball of stuff, chairs, signs, tanks, gravel and so on, literally sucking the universe dry of interesting stuff. A universal suck, maybe even a multiversal suck mechanism. Either way, I'm pretty sure we'll not see it coming.
Task Mangler
I'm actually pretty excited at this news. Granted, my understanding of astrophysics is limited to Hawking books and guests of George Noory (kidding, kind of). But I look forward to anything that seems to pin down the concept of 'dark matter'.
Dark matter to me has always smacked of a Victorian Era flimflam artist talking about the aether. And I don't care how dapper Mortimer T. Snerd is dressed, I'm not drinking his dark matter kool-aid until I can get a better explination for it than 'its invisible, supermassive, unobservable, and so totally there'. If you can't explain it to me, the interested layman, you may need to put your theory back in the crucible o' truth. Its probably not done yet.
-=Bang Bang=-
Somebody remind Professor Farnsworth not to point the smelloscope at the dark flow. He passed out last time.
> NASA astrophysicists have discovered what they claim is something outside the observable universe exerting an effect on the observable.
The third episode of Brian Greene's "Elegant Universe" documentary miniseries on PBS said that while matter is confined to the known dimensions, its possible that gravity isn't and so can move through dimensions. The example they feel is that we could possibly detect the gravity of 'something' in another Universe by its gravity, even though we could never actually touch it. Wonder if this is it?
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/elegant/
The Dark Matter in US is pulling a ball busting amount of money away from tax payers to Large Banks.
In this area of Universe known as Capitol Hill and White House, the normal laws of space-time continumm is suspended so that banks which screw up your money get your money to bail out themselves.
"Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer
I have a bad feeling about this.
Do not trust this signature.
Is it just me or is "dark" an over-used buzz-word in astronomy/astrophysics. 'Dark' Matter, 'Dark' Energy, 'Dark' flow. 'Dark' Star, well the last one was a Beck song.
Suddenly, the predicted "end of the universe" models look a little dusty.
I record my sleeptalking
The universe is mmuch more complex than the average scientist lets on.
A Good Troll is better than a Bad Human.
Maybe that part of the universe just has accumulated a lot of entropy. Lots of mass, not much in the way of energetic matter.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
The speed of light is also the maximum speed of causation...if these "super structures" are outside the observable universe, how in the hell are they affecting anything within the observable universe? If they can exert causal influence on these galaxies, and the light from these galaxies has time to reach us... I could be wrong but I feel like someone, somewhere, is seriously contradicting themselves. Maybe those string theorists can tell us if its possible there's cosmic string tied between the galaxies and a giant tug boat in hyperspace...
now i don't know much of anything about astrophysics but i love reading about it and it's my understanding that if these massive objects outside of our universe was causing the gravitational pull that is expanding the bodies in our universe, wouldn't that mean that different parts of the universe would expand at various speeds depending on the size of the massive object outside of our universe? i'm just imagining it all as a bubble in my head so i'm sure my image if flawed
Reminds me of some writing by William James Sidis, published in 1925.
William James Sidis, The Animate and the Inanimate
There are preprints of the two relevant papers on astro-ph.
More general version (ApJL)
http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/0809.3734
More technical version (ApJ)
http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/0809.3733
Excuse my ignorance but isn't the speed of gravity about the same as the speed of light?
They claim they can't "see" whats causing this because light from there hasn't reached us yet, yet the gravity waves from the "dark object" have reached the region of space where this "dark flow" is. So can't they calculate when we should be seeing the first light from that "dark object"?
If it even emits light... IMO it seems to be a farflung theory, still intresting though.
This is the kind of thing that makes me love cosmology. I am really looking forward to the stuff that is going to come out one we have more gravitational observatories online, so we can see both really deep into the universe and also see structures that might otherwise be invisible.
As opposed to things like the LHC (which is cool, granted), where the best you can hope for is that it finds something different than what they expect by Standard Theory, the field of astrophysics is almost scary in the weirdness that seems to be just around the corner.
I've got a bad attitude and karma to burn. Go ahead. Mod me down.
3, 2, 1...
Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure everything I just said is completely wrong.
It's God
Spelling and Grammar errors have been added to this post for your enjoyment
must be the beast with a billion backs...
Never say never. Ah!! I did it again!
Perhaps the very act of observation changes the result of observation.
What NASA really meant to say was, "Shit, we just found something else that does not fit our current model of the universe. Lets just make some stuff up and call it a new discovery"
Maybe this time people will wake up.....probably not.
http://bigbangneverhappened.org/
The Great Attractor is another mistery. Entire galaxies are pulled toward it where there is nothing just empty space.
Government cannot make man richer, but it can make him poorer. - Ludwig von Mises
Didn't Star Trek and Babylon 5 deal with this already?
Don't be apathetic. Procrastinate!
It's the giant glass of Guiness that we're floating around in inside of our little bubble.
Sig this!
> Yes, a big bagless vacuum cleaner. In my theory I'll outline to time of the apocalypse, or as I call it, Dyson time.
So if they had instead discovered the Cosmic Forge, would you have called it Hammer Time?
I'd intended to add this to the summary, but forgot.
TFA has a very nice, if brief, explication on the "universe" vs. "observable universe". Too many people (science and science writing pros among them) make assertions about the former when they should specify the latter.
Go ahead and read it, it's only a space.com article (ie. very short).
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
Perhaps the parallel universe had more success with their LHC.
To paraphrase David Hume: There is no reason to believe that the laws of physics have always been what they are today at all points in space and at all points in time. While it is well within reason, and quite likely, that the Universe follows neat patterns quite specifically, when one runs into really odd data that doesn't fit into your tidy boxes it might be time to rethink things. Dark matter/flow/energy or whatever the new buzzwords scientists come up with are stop gap measures meant to really say, "we haven't the foggiest idea what's going on, but it doesn't quite add up".
Burn Hollywood Burn
see an OB/GYN & stfu, kthx
The Admin and the Engineer
fail.
93rd rule of Slashdot: No matter how obvious my sarcasm is, my comment will be taken seriously by someone.
Yes, but norse mythology have nine worlds or universes in it, but this finding doesn't make it more real for that.
Your hypothesis is flawed sir!
In fact, several religions have imagined that there are multiple worlds or universes, so the multiverse idea seem to map in nicely on all of them.
Before you assert the truthfulness of Judaism (and in this I also include whatever derived versions of it that exists like Christendom and Islam (which is derived from Christianity)); you should also give equal space to greek, roman, norse and keltic mythology (sorry, I don't know that much about non European ancient religions, but you may continue the list on your own).
Because you do not consider the other alternatives your assertions here are flawed and one sided.
It is a bit like saying out loud 3 before rolling a dice showing 3. Once I did that 3 times in a row, despite this I am unable to predict dice rolls any more accurately than other people.
Slashdot, vous échouez Unicode.
I hate printers.
Anyone who thinks that we live in the highest form of universe that, when destroyed, will end all life in our dimension is themselves as self-centered and close minded as those who believed we were the center of the universe.
Ginga no Rekshiya Mata Each page.
Last time I read something about it (can't remember where but it was probably SciAm) it was said that the diameter of the visible universe is far greater than 2*13.7 Gly because the universe has expanded significantly since those first photons got underway. After all, they got stretched several times (redshift.)
thegodmovie.com - watch it
Ok, here's a question for you. The "observable universe" isn't just the observable universe for us, it is that for the whole universe. Nowhere in the universe that is observable to us can you go and observe beyond 13.7 billion light years. We're all in the same boat. However, in the area of the universe that is being affected by this phenomena, they must be able to observe what is causing it. Elsewise, it couldn't be affecting them. There is nothing that can affect me that is unobservable. You can't be so far away that you are beyond my observation range and yet still affect me, unless you are exerting FTL influence on me. So, if this is truly an influence from beyond the visible universe, then that would seem to me to imply FTL.
Why is it that science is currently in it's goth phase, everything has to be named "Dark x".
just goes to show how much being a drama queen matters, compared to just the old way of demonstrating experiments.
They are as much Drama Scientists as Jack Thompson is a Drama Lawyer.
Though fortunately not Retard Scientists the same way JT is a Retard Lawyer
Blah blah sig blah blah blah irony blah blah
You need the link to the picture for lulz.
On clothes exported from USA to France: [We are sorry that our president is an idiot. We didn't vote for him]
So are you an american threating europeans or is it the other way around?
One thing I can say is you are an idiot
There you are, little fella. I've been looking all over for you!
Meep.
Scientists have attempted to map these regions. They are, of course, not sure what is tugging at the galaxies, but by looking at the relative velocities it's possible to create a map of the structure of the filament like "flows". Their best guess at the moment is: this
yeah. I wonder if it actually happened. Since when does the US make clothes and if we did since when do we export them to France?
I thought we ran up huge deficits to squander the planet's resources on an unsustainable way of life, not exporting things too.
93rd rule of Slashdot: No matter how obvious my sarcasm is, my comment will be taken seriously by someone.
So what they're really saying is..... yadda, yadda, yadda....we don't know what the hell is going on with the universe...everytime we think we do we find something new that throws us all for a loop.... No big surprise....can't believe the astrophysics community takes any "hard data" about the universe seriously since the limitions of what we are able to observe and comprehend right now are staggering...we're just at the very beggining of understanding the universe and it's underlying mechanism....let's quit trying to make bold statments about it's age and "dark matter" when we barely have a clue about it at all... I swear this community has as many "politicians" wrangling for prestige and power as the government does....
First we had dark energy, then dark matter, now dark flow. All to try and explain an unexpected effect of something we don't understand. Lets figure out what exactly gravity is and how it really works over large scales, then we can revisit all this "dark" stuff.
Murphey's fighting Occam, and we're in the stands.
way of life (emphasis mine)
Looking at the population in question, it might presumably be interesting to investigate how the imperative "Get a life!" would apply. I am sure that — with a little tweaking towards a more academic language — you can make a nice thesis out of that.
CC.
TaijiQuan (Huang, 5 loosenings)
There were a couple of interesting things here. First, the region that these clusters are supposedly moving towards are pretty close to being in line with the heart of the Milky Way. What this means is that the attractor object may simply be obscured by our own galaxy. Second, the motion is not unusually large for superclusters. For example, the Milky Way and everything near us moves towards the heart of the Virgo supercluster at around 1.4 million mph, about 70% of the observed motion. So as I see it, there could be a more routine explanation. I gather from the story they have more data that indicates a nonlocal interaction. Namely, the motion of these clusters is probably all in a certain direction towards the horizon rather than towards a point.
But if the inflationary theory of the universe is correct, then you would expect to see motion that came from long ago interaction with other matter that no longer resides inside what we can see of the universe, the so-called observable universe. What really bothers me here is the claim that these bodies are still experiencing forces from the long departed rest of the universe. I doubt that's occuring no matter what funky rules might apply elsewhere.
I'm waiting for the universe to be explained due to the forces of Fuck Off Matter.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
I think it wasn't clothes, it was a snazzy laptop bag, and it wasn't France, it was French-speaking Canada.
Consciousness is an illusion caused by an excess of self consciousness.
How long before the first scientists start acting... peculiar? (that is, more peculiar than scientists normally act) Have *you* seen the yellow sign?
Machine9dotNet
Let's start with a recap of some statements that are true under current physical theories: (1) space itself is expanding (Hubble Expansion); (2) early in the history of the universe, the expansion of space was faster than the speed of light (Inflationary Big Bang theory); (3) nothing can exceed the speed of light, not even gravity or information (Special and General Relativity); and (4) we are confined our "observable universe": a bubble 92 billion light-years in diameter (General Relativity plus Inflationary Big Bang theory — 13.7 billion light-years, plus inflation, plus 13.7 billion years of Hubble expansion).
Given these facts, neither gravity nor information from outside our observable universe can enter it.
Sure, parts of what we currently consider the observable universe might, in their own relativistic timeline, be "currently" experiencing a gravitational tug from parts of the universe that we can't currently observe, even in principle. However, if that is true, then either (a) such observable places will exit our field of observation before we observe that gravitational tug (i.e. the universe will expand faster than light), or (b) such unobservable places exerting a gravitational tug will enter our field of observation before we see the tug on things we can currently see (i.e. the universe will expand slower than light).
There's no way that information could take a roundabout path to us and arrive faster than information traveling in a straight line (or, more correctly in GR, a geodesic). Think about it: if light/gravity/information cannot travel directly to us, because the direct path is too long and too slow, how could it travel indirectly to us? The indirect path is, by definition, longer and slower than the direct path.
I suppose that, if a large mass was once observable but now is not (i.e. it tugged on some galaxies, then inflation happened), the theory in the article might make a certain amount of sense. But the timescale of inflation (fractions of a second after the Big Bang) doesn't really leave a lot of time for that to happen. It sounds much more plausible to my ears that either (a) there is a previously-undiscovered conglomeration of dark matter in that direction, but it still lies within our observable bubble; or (b) the galaxies in question are at high velocity but no longer accelerating, indicating leftover momentum from an ejection, collision, or some other high-energy event in the early universe.
OTOH, I'm no physicist, so maybe I'm missing something, or maybe the actual theory being promoted makes more sense than Space.com's rather awful writeup.
Range Voting: preference intensity matters
Can we get a 'nonomnom' tag for this one?
what if there were super massiv eblack holes all over space and when once every few dozen billion years two come close or collide or whatever. They might rip apart matter in such a massive proporation as to be a BIG BANG, but ill call it the BIG RIP ( HAHA i can see the jokes now /farts)
NOW what nasa observes might actually be that some of OUR universe form one of these rips, is actually being pulled towards one of these super super massive back holes.
It would also account why the universe is expanding at an ever faster rate, and it would mean that all things are finite.
It's worrisome when scientists start sounding increasingly like Star Trek technobabble.
oh and when they say OBSERVABLE that means not just this so called dark matter but how far out they can actually see. IF they could see three times or 5 times as far out would they see other universes of the above idea? perhaps the grandverse is actually thousands a times larger and there are multitudes of events such as these and thus trillions of galaxies.....
Something that's not there is pulling matter to it? Wouldn't a simpler (at least from a certain point of view) theory be that space is warped at that place so that normal interactions and paths matter takes looks curved to us? (How warped? Dunno. Maybe in a fourth dimension...)
Of course this leaves us with the question - what is warping the space? The only thing we're aware of that has that effect is gravity. Since we think we know gravity well enough to say it's only present/caused by mass, and there's no mass in that region of space, it's either something else, or the space is "just" curved - an artefact of its existence, caused maybe by its expanding during the big bang.
-- Sig down
Yes - the Unicode support at Slashdot is really not right.
I'd rather have a rÃksmÃrgÃ¥s (shrimp sandwich)...
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
I feel Universe is finite and is enclosed in a egg shaped enclosure. What scientists are noticing is probably just a magnified reflection of galaxies. Its like one of those magic mirrors at school.
Eclipse PDE and Me
...either that or something is taking a deep inhale?
Go back to writing whiney emo poems, it suits you better.
How something that is "unobservable" is observed ?
JAM
a massive accumulation of odd socks, biros and AOL CDs
the word "observable". AFAIUI, in this case it means directly observable. Given an expanding universe -- since nothing can travel faster than light (and c is finite) and the universe has a finite age there is a limit to how far you can "see" in any direction from any given vantage point (see "horizon problem"). However, you might still be able to see an object at the very edge of "your" observable universe being influenced by something beyond your particular observation horizon -- that is, you can tell that it is being influenced by something and that it's not being influenced by something inside horizon. So essentially very talking about indirect observation here.
HAND.
the ending of the first MIB movie... :-P
Does that mean the size of an apple gets larger? or the distance between two apples gets larger? What is it the atom radius? or the distance between galaxies?
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
Perhaps there are billions of planetary bodies out there are they are not reflective enough to show up on our telescopes. Perhaps there is no "dark matter" or "dark energy" or "dark flow", only dark planets. And these are so numerous, that they exert a tremendous gravitational attraction, but we can not see them.
I like to call it "the twisting nether."
The Seth books from the 70's already mentioned strange stuff like this.. In short, as our tools and science advances, we'll see more things that point in the direction of an 'unseen universe', a 5th dimension. But because our tools are part of the camouflage dimension we're in, we can't use them to probe the 'real' universe. Interesting stuff, to me anyhow!
the entire universe is just a single sphere of e-ink in another dimension, and the display is currently changing state so that everything in our universe is going to rush up against one end...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
Your mind mercifully fails to grasp the full meaning of this horrific new vista now opened by our misguided science. Clearly, that vile spawn of nuclear Chaos hinted at in the dread Necronomicon of the Mad Arab Abdul Alhazred, and gracefully masked behind the name Azathoth, has been located. Worship it with frantic incantations at the Altars of Madness, puny mortals, to make sure you're eaten first and do not suffer for Aeons in the eldritch grasp of material insanity.
Phn'glui mglw'nafh Cthulhu Rlyeh wgahnagl fhtagn!
blow your mind already
This is not new and has even been filmed before:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LyzIau5dBao
Ok, I have no mod opints here, but please, somebody mod the paent up. In lay-man words, he has just explained how this experiment doesn't prove time travel is possible (wht the summary leads one to wrongly think it does).
Rethinking email
All of this hinges on the certainty of a sect of scientists that assumes the red shifting we presume is caused by recession is not caused by something else.
Must be grant-writing season. Fairy-tales compounding fantasy multiplying speculation. I believe it's dark chocolate not dark matter that attracts medium-scale astronomical structures. That and strawberries ....
Therefore, claiming that there could be "giant, massive structures much larger than anything in our own observable universe" just outside this bubble seems somewhat... convenient.
"giant, massive structures much larger than anything in our own observable universe" is the new "here be dragons".
You just got troll'd!
"Gravistar"
I find it funny that this has not gotten more traction, but the "Gavistar" theory explains why our universe is expanding (more importantly - accelerating) without having to buy into hokey science fiction concepts like "dark matter" or now "dark flow". Research it on your own but in short a team of mathematicians set out on a goal to mathematically describe the phenomenon we know today as the Black Hole. They found an equation that fits perfectly and when they stepped back and looked at the physical model this equation was describing, it was a spherical but hollow object (like an empty egg) having a shell of very dense matter having strong enough gravitational forces on the outside surface and equally on the inside surface of its shell. The twist to thier own suprise was if you drastically increased the size of the Gravistar model so much so that the entire universe can fit inside it, you'll realize that the forces accelerating our galaxies to the edges of the universe is not "dark matter", rather it is the gravitational pull towards the inside edges of this super-mega-Gravistar. Theory goes on to suggest that we are possibly inside the formation or birth of a mega-Gravistar where the remaining matter or collapsing core "us" is still being absorbed into the formation of the inner shell. Call me consistent, but I'd believe in mathematics before I'd believe in magical concepts like fairy dusk, dark matter, and the singularity.
that is all nice, but I bring up the question of what these huge structures are, if they aren't stars. Is this how the universe is expanding, because of huge structures that should be where nothing is? ... I want to see that math behind this
I heard Lucas jettisoned the unused Jar Jar Binks footage from Episode 2 into that region of space and it sucked so bad that it's actually drawing galaxies towards it like a massive black hole. The first attempt to view the footage resulted in a localized singularity that cost the lives of several editors. It was after that unfortunate incident that Lucas decided it was safer to launch the extra footage into the intergalactic void. It's rumored one surviving can of film was placed next to the lost Ark but most believe it was just a myth and hopefully Harrison Ford is too old to go looking for it. Panic spread when a title showed up on line for Indy 5, "Indiana Jones and the Lost Outtakes" but the rumor was quickly denied by Speilberg although Lucas has refused to comment.
I think I saw a movie about this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dark_Crystal/
If my understanding is correct, although in all probability I could be completely wrong, then according to Einstein's general theory of relativity space-time is curved such that if I were to travel in a straight line across the breadth of the universe then I would eventually arrive at the same point in space from where I originally started.
Thus in respect to the galaxy cluster that is being pulled by an "unobservable mass" outside the observable universe relative to ourselves would not that mass, or at least the effects of that mass (if it is dark matter), be observable by looking for it in the opposite direction.
For example: Say I make an observation at the North Pole that galaxy cluster A, sighted directly above the North Pole, is moving away from us towards an unobservable mass B that appears to be outside of our universe. Then drawing a line from where I am at the North Pole through cluster A and mass B and on then by the curvature of the universe surely that line would eventually travel the circumference of the universe until it passes through the South Pole and back to where I am standing at the North Pole. So if I want to see B (considering it is visible or its effects) then by making an observation from the South Pole back along our imaginary line in the opposite direction then I would surely be able observe B inside our observable universe.
The article says we can only see 13,7 billion light years into our local bubble of space because of the limits of the speed of light. The same limit also applies to gravitation. If we can see the effects of some unknown gravitational source on light that has travelled for 13,7 billion years we should also be able to see the effect of this source of gravitation everywhere in a bubble with a radius of 13,7 billion lighyears around the objects we observe. That is: we should experience this source of gravitation locally (allthough it might be much weaker). There is also some confusion, I think, about the difference between time and distance. We measure distance as a function of time because of the constant speed of light, but this is not the same thing as actual distance. The actual size of the universe we observe is more like 78 billion light years, based on the particle horizon which is the distance to the farthest particle that we somehow can observere today.
"Gravastar"
I find it funny that this has not gotten more traction, but the "Gavistar" theory explains why our universe is expanding (more importantly - accelerating) without having to buy into hokey science fiction concepts like "dark matter" or now "dark flow". Research it on your own but in short a team of mathematicians set out on a goal to mathematically describe the phenomenon we know today as the Black Hole. They found an equation that fits perfectly and when they stepped back and looked at the physical model this equation was describing, it was a spherical but hollow object (like an empty egg) having a shell of very dense matter having strong enough gravitational forces on the outside surface and equally on the inside surface of its shell. The twist to thier own suprise was if you drastically increased the size of the Gravistar model so much so that the entire universe can fit inside it, you'll realize that the forces accelerating our galaxies to the edges of the universe is not "dark matter", rather it is the gravitational pull towards the inside edges of this super-mega-Gravistar. Theory goes on to suggest that we are possibly inside the formation or birth of a mega-Gravistar where the remaining matter or collapsing core "us" is still being absorbed into the formation of the inner shell. Call me consistent, but I'd believe in mathematics before I'd believe in magical concepts like fairy dust, dark matter, and the singularity.
I really like this alternative to black holes
I like the idea of taking a dimension away.. Like Z .. So everything is the same size now matter how far or close it is.
Also, since we've found this 'dark matter' I wonder if it accounts for the socks gone missing in my dryer
Go go Gadget Nailgun!
That's a space fleet!
Hang on, I'm getting an audio IM... well would you look at that, it's the fleet, and they've got a message for humanity... why do I hear a choir singing "Oh mah korei!"? Let me transcribe the message for Slashdot's readers...
"EX-TER-MINATE. EX-TER-MINATE. EX-TER-MINATE."
*CARRIER FAILURE*
Member of in-ferior species hu-man known as Eli Gottlieb has been EX-TERRRMINATED.
They move us to a bigger terrarium.
For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD.
It's just more human arrogance to assume that what we can currently (or ever) observe constitutes the entire scope of existence. People laugh today at those who thought the earth was flat. Columbus thought he found the Indies. We've discovered that the solar system doesn't revolve around the earth and the galaxy doesn't revolve around the solar system. The reality is that our scientific observations are limited by our tools and our assumptions. Our imaginations are not so limited.
We can speculate all we want about what is "out there" and the effort to expand our knowledge and understanding of the world is a wonderful thing. I would just encourage those who feel it necessary to ridicule religion and/or faith to consider the idea that it is possible that our universe/universes are more complex and interesting than we could ever possibly comprehend. Not saying that we shouldn't try, just that you might want to consider the limits of our intelligence before deciding that the concept of God is such a silly idea.
Do I have 'proof'? Nope, but it is my contention that God is outside our ability to fully comprehend or observe. If God is truly the creator, and we consider the vastness, complexity, and beauty of our observable universe, I do not believe that that theory is really that much of a stretch.
Certainly no more so than "dark flows".
Once I did that 3 times in a row
You're a WITCH!
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
They can only speculate on what the material is and how space might differ there: "In these regions, space-time might be very different, and likely doesn't contain stars and galaxies..."
Obviously, it's fluidic space, and Species 8472 are coming for us.
It's obvious. It's the Source behind the Source Wall. Highfather's staff is stuck in the wall and Superman once got stuck in the Source. No mystery.
Jesus. First it was the dot-com bubble bursting, then the sub-prime bubble, then the credit-default-swap bubble. Now you tell me we all live in a space-time bubble. When is it gonna burst?
...the warnings from Ross Perot of a giant sucking sound?
Why, without your clothes, you're naked, Miss Dudley!
Would this be a partial explanation for the "Dark Energy" Phenomenon?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_energy
Shop smart, Shop S-Mart.
So the far "galaxy" is disappearing faster and so getting further away quicker.
than the speed of light.
There's a horizon where the age of the universe hasn't given light enough time to travel from "there" to here. there's also another horizon that is where the Hubble constant has the "retreating" galaxy going faster than the speed of light.
And likely another Horizon if inflation is true that is the horizon of what USED to be within our light cone before inflation started but is now currently out of our light cone after inflation. Some of this is at a distance less than the "hubble" horizon and so after a while will be overtaken by our light cone and then we can see it.
Which horizon this dark sucking matter is is anyone's guess, I guess.
Cool post.
Isn't it true that if something "unobservable" is exerting an effect on observable things, then it is also observable? Maybe directly observable is the term that was meant in the summary, but I guess the follow on question to that is why are directly and indirectly different?
Yes, your feeble man-brain cannot contain the glory of the infernal court of Azathoth...
Maxim: People cannot follow directions.
Increases in truth directly with the length of time spent explaining them
"Dark flow" eh ? So the universe is female, after all ?
What a depressingly stupid machine.
Who linked a stargate to a black hole? We need find a way to shut it down before it gets to us.
Your reply is witty, but lacking in a few aspects:
1) You are limiting yourself to physics. While my parent did the same, I did not.
2) You do not have to fully understand something in order to be able to use it. Take the Riemann hypothesis. Or gravity.
3) How well will the barmaid, the grandmother and the six-year-old understand the topic? Will that knowledge remain? Will they be able to explain it, themselves?
I agree with what these quotes are saying, but I do not think they are applicable in this case.
Time to read Excession again.
That which does not kill us makes us... st
It's outside our observable universe and is large...it must be God
He is right: my light cone, per special relativity, is the boundary beyond which things can have *no effect on me whatsoever*. Any effect coming from the other side of the light cone would allow communication back in time from some frames of reference, and all the fucked-up things that come with that.
If information is traversing the light cone, relativity is wrong.
I do have a BS in Physics and strong interest in relativity, but I am not a physicist.
If I remember right, the question of whether we're in an open or closed Universe was "settled" in the last ten years after scientists determined that there's not enough dark matter to give the Universe sufficient mass to contract again. If observed mass is the only evidence that we're in an inflationary Universe, it seems reasonable to suppose that this new finding could change that interpretation, giving the Universe enough mass to begin contracting again some time in the distant future.
Dark energy, dark matter, dark flow, dark etc. Every new mystery is "dark X". The cause of the mortgage meltdown? Dark financing. Let's consolidate it all into "dark shit".
Table-ized A.I.
and the tuna moving faster than the cat.
This new theory supports the standard inflationary picture. It doesn't introduce huge new amounts of mass that can collapse the universe. It just suggests that different parts of the universe pulled on each other during inflation.
With more and more evidence that doesn't fit into their current model, why don't they just admit that the big bang theory ( it's epicycles all the way down ) is flawed and start fresh with open minds ?
More evidence that we're just probabilities of a particle of a coffee mug on some super-massive desk in the un-observable universe.
Am no fek Buddhist, but this is enlightenment.
"The structures responsible for this motion have been pushed so far away by inflation, I would guesstimate they may be hundreds of billions of light years away, that we cannot see even with the deepest telescopes because the light emitted there could not have reached us in the age of the universe," Kashlinsky said in a telephone interview.
If these super structures are so far away that their light would not have reached us in the whole age of our universe, then how would their gravitational fields, which supposedly also travel at the speed of light, have any effect on our universe?
I stopped taking Alli after that.
I don't know about you, but it depends on what I'm being fed as to how "dark" it is when revisted...
Bacteria in boiling water is only useful if it's yummy. Our human forms need to spread off this planet before something interesting happens to the planet.
processes? It seems the black holes suck, and these flows... flow... Equilibrium at work? Is there an equivalent to a cosmic intestinal tract?
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
If anything we don't know much about is dark (dark matter, dark energy, etc) this seems very fitting for our dark presidential candidate we know not much about.
You got it. There is more to space than meets the eye.
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
Is someone following me around modding my stuff overrated? I wouldn't have minded if they had actually modded the factual parent post to which I referred up, or the incorrect ancestor +5 post down. As it is, they're just hiding the truth.
CrimsonAvenger, modded at 2 (the parent in my MOD PARENT UP comment), has it completely right. Warrax, modded at 5 Informative, has it completely wrong.
"Information can't travel faster than the speed of light" means just what it says. The impossibility of detecting changes outside your light cone is transitive - you can't detect changes outside your light cone, not even in the form of detecting changes to an object inside your light cone caused by an object outside your light cone.
At least, per relativity, you can't. If you can, then relativity is wrong.
I know someone did their quantum physics phd on this, 20 years ago. She used red-shift information on 60,000 galaxies to notice that galaxies are pulled towards near-by universes. The review panel said, we can't verify your work because you used a mainframe to do batch calculations and how can we verify that?
Someone pulled the plug. We're going to circle the drain for a bit and then disappear forever into the galactic sewer line...
The contest for ages has been to rescue liberty from the grasp of executive power. -- Daniel Webster
There have been discoveries of dark matter, and they are at least understandable by lay people like myself. Here is a video of one.
It's the Foe's kugelblitz.
She turned me into a neutralino.....
I got better.....
Now we know where He lives.
Changing the world... one research project at a time.
It's Spiral Nemesis!
Our theories about space-time are wrong, based on a tiny sample of local phenomena, and it is a complete and utter waste of time and resources for us to even begin making calculations of this sort at this point.
Maybe just maybe, its us who is wrong and not the amount of matter.
who froths as primal slime in nuclear chaos beyond the nethermost outposts of space and time!
It is Gods Colon....
It depends on how you define the observable universe. Traditionally, the Observable Universe is defined as the maximum distance light could travel given the classic four dimensions of spacetime. This is a convenient, mathematical definition that is useful when constructing telescopes that intend to peer "deeper" into the observable universe and its past.
This definition completely ignores theories built on top of the standard model which contain more than 4 dimensions, however. But then, once you enter the realm of "theory", you could postulate that unicorns made of pixie dust exist and nobody would be able to so much as look at you funny if it satisfies what we believe to be true via the standard model.
I have no in-depth knowledge of the subject that would qualify me to suggest that any one theory is better than any other. Like any other arm-chair quarterbacking sports fanatic, though, I'm rooting for forces acting via the 5th through 10th dimensions being indirectly observed in the classic 1st through 4th. I want my time machine, damnit!
It's the giant tissue that the sneeze which is our universe, is headed towards.
How many more years will slashdot have an off-by-one error on your Score in your profile?
Astronomy RULES! I LOVE this stuff!
When did we discover the exact speed of gravity?
Idiots!
Liberty in your lifetime
That NASA is going to the dark side? It's like they're obsessed with all things dark and evil. Dark matter, dark energy, supermassive black holes, heat death, cold death, big freeze, and now the Dark Flow(tm). What's next, they discover some unknown energy emanating from space and call it the Power of Darkness?
The path to enlightenment is truly through homemade drugs!
From what I have seen of theoretical physics of the last 30 years (string/MTheory etc) you may as well call it the boogeyman
From what I gather, dark matter is well-established by both the gravitational lensing observations, and by the dynamics of galaxy rotation.
OTOH, dark energy is currently in an entirely separate class of theory that is mainly speculation.
There are so many interesting questions when you look at this 'dark flow' phenomenon. Is it caused by dark matter? Perhaps a gigantic primordial singularity? A region of space-time that collapsed after the big band? Or is it a 'dark' energy from another dimension pushing those galaxies in that direction? What if inflation occurs unevenly? How about the idea that another space-time (or 'brane') could be colliding with or 'pouring' into ours?
Many of us have dreamed of the day this discovery was made, many have written about it. In the description, I see something a bit more exciting than merely "dark flows", and the scifi junkie here should be ecstatic. With the launch of the X-Ray observatory, and the initial finds now pouring in, I personally felt that finding the very first glimpses of hyperspace we're only a matter of months, not decades, away. Yep, I said it, hyperspace, and everyone that knows even the amateurs knowledge of that should be quivering with excitement. Now the logical next step should be, defining the "dark flow" a bit more, then defining what rules and laws exist there, then of course, how do we reach it? But for now, we can be rest assured that we are in fact, knocking on the door of it, now all we have to do is open it, and peek inside.... now todays homework assignment is get the calls and emails into every hyper-dimensional physicist on earth and start the dialogue
I am no longer interested in taking over the world, I just want a modest corner of the Solar System
They really are building a Kerr-Metric Gateway!
"The space elevator will be built about 50 years after everyone stops laughing." - Arthur C. Clarke ~1980
My memory is not very good but in the 60's or 70's there was a item in Analog (a science fiction magazine). This was more of a story than anything. Please note at one time Analog was an excellent magazine and since the 70's has leaped down hill and is now (is it still published??) ... Anyway there was an story about these beings that were "god" like and went around creating universes in a glass like ball (as experiments). That may have been closer to the truth than anything I have seen or heard so far.
The speed of light limit has some caveats. Wormholes, which Relativity predicts, offer a way out. You dont need to actually travel faster than light, if you can find shortcuts through other dimensions. The physicist Kip Thorne formulated the mathematics of transversable wormholes. Just because its something beyond out current physics, doesnt mean that FTL cant exist. After all, do any of you really think that the current theories are entirely correct? Just like Newton was supplanted by Einstein, so Einstein will be supplanted one day. The fact is, if you take brane theory into account there could be other universes where our laws of physics dont even apply, and if a wormhole bridge can exist between them, not only FTL but time travel is a real possibility. As a matter of fact, Theoretical physicists like Kaku state that, with cosmic censorship in place, that FTL and time travel are a real possibility.
I should make it more clear that this doesn't make it possible to transmit information faster than light. The instrument on one end can't determine the orientation of the instrument on the other end, but the measurement results are guaranteed to be consistent with the measurement results at the other end. Even though the measurement results are dependent on orientation.
This is most interesting when the filters are orthogonal to one another, because then you're guaranteed that if you see the photon, the other guy doesn't, and vice versa.
Dark flow phenomenon causing force drawing someone truly massive property is located in the visible universe outside? How does this tractive force is conveyed?
For example, the stars radiate throughout the energy of waves with particles of nature! Particles moving mode, which is already in place and at the same time, the region can move particles emanating from the various starfish, and they continue the movement quite the same direction away from the area in which the stars is!
The visible universe outside is truly massive concentration of energy which radiate energy waves, which have the nature of quasars. the same region can become the galaxy from several different angles, so that the business continues to quite the same direction, at the same time, when the first stars emit flammable Light. As a dark flow phenomenon can be explained logically!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AewKGNIZpuE
Shoot up in two shotgun in space from two different places in the same area. Shotguns the distance is perhaps a hundred meters and the shot from the same region the same time as 10 kilometers away, after which they will continue to divergence and journeyed quite the same direction. Part of shells, however, goes a different direction, even if all shot to continue their journey away from the same area from where they were shot at moving!
If the second shotgun shot yet shells slightly faster circulation, and perhaps a bit later, so avot.
Now, just think of a shell it is clusters a set of galaksy stars were born only because the area where the shot come from the same region.
(Stars born later, when babyclusters are same area in space who dont expanding and space who was there already)
Shotgun illustrate the huge energy mergers which are the shot came, but so that they do not drive their own power, but only the pushing of force based on the fact that energy turns into a normal high density of less energy when the gunpowder explodes noticeably!
A change of power in the high density of less energy, when the gunpowder explodes noticeably?
If so, why should space to expand, although the energy is expanding noticeably mode, which does not change?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AewKGNIZpuE