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Australian Study Backs Major Assumption of Cosmology

Posted by samzenpus on from the if-you've-seen-250-million-light-years-of-it-you've-seen-it-all dept.

cylonlover writes "In mankind's attempts to gain some understanding of this marvelous place in which we live, we have slowly come to accept some principles to help guide our search. One such principle is that the Universe, on a large enough scale, is homogeneous, meaning that one part looks pretty much like another. Recent studies by a group of Australian researchers have established that, on sizes greater than about 250 million light years (Mly), the Universe is indeed statistically homogeneous, thereby reinforcing this cosmological principle."

7 of 94 comments (clear)

  1. on smaller scales as well by tverbeek · · Score: 5, Funny

    Once you've seen one suburban shopping mall, you've seen them all.

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  2. Down under by Hatta · · Score: 5, Funny

    So the laws of physics still hold in Australia at least.

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    1. Re:Down under by JustOK · · Score: 5, Funny

      Gravity works backwards down there too, so it pulls them up, which is down.

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  3. Re:Aliens? by Antipater · · Score: 5, Informative

    (and, shouldnt that be a unit of volume, not length?)

    When talking in terms of scale, it's generally better to use fundamental units, not derived ones. Volume is derived from length (length^3), so a volume scale is inherently a length scale, but less precise. If you were to use a volume scale, say 250Mly^3, then that could mean different averages looking in different directions (i.e. the universe is homogenous every 250kly looking up, every 10ly looking left, and every 100ly looking forward). Just using a length scale ensures all 3 dimensions are covered equally.

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  4. Visualizing The Scale by cb123 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Most comments seem to be vying for most funny, but if you do happen to care about visualizing the scale, the distance to our closest full-sized galactic neighbor, the Andromeda Galaxy is 2.5 Mly. That is 1% of the homogeneity scale cited by the article. So, they are saying that things seem smooth averaged over scales merely 100 times bigger than the distance to the nearest extra-galactic clump which is sized comparably to The Milky Way. That's actually pretty smooth, in context.

  5. Re:Aliens? Probably. by wermske · · Score: 4, Insightful

    ...an argument often made right here on Earth.

  6. This research is false. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Until the Billion light-year across VOID is explained, this article makes no sense! http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn12546-biggest-void-in-space-is-1-billion-light-years-across.html