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Mysterious "Cold Spot": Fingerprint of Largest Structure In the Universe?
astroengine writes At the furthest-most reaches of the observable universe lies one of the most enigmatic mysteries of modern cosmology: the cosmic microwave background (CMB) Cold Spot. Discovered in 2004, this strange feature etched into the primordial echo of the Big Bang has been the focus of many hypotheses — could it be the presence of another universe? Or is it just instrumental error? Now, astronomers may have acquired strong evidence as to the Cold Spot's origin and, perhaps unsurprisingly, no multiverse hypothesis is required. But it's not instrumental error either. It could be a vast "supervoid" around 1.8 billion light-years wide that is altering the characteristics of the CMB radiation traveling through it.
your mom.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Only a plucky human empath and his minidrag can save us now!
Third word in.
Why does everyone love the word further?
Calling out bogus battery capacity claims.
"vast supervoid around 1.8 billion light-years wide"
Wow, that must have been some BIG super-collider accident.
Do you ever feel dirty for replying offtopic to useless/joke posts to get your "serious" post to show up higher on the list?
2. Door out of the Holodeck.
3. Kolob
4. Missing dryer socks
5. Where another LHC went "south"
6. Where God divided by zero
7. Where the Death Star exploded, taking out the neighborhood
8. Universe's belly button
9. Universe's tail end orifice
Table-ized A.I.
At the furthest-most reaches
Furthest-most? When "furthest" is just not far enough?
This is the worstest made up word I've seen in a long time.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Only this civilization was so big, one star system or even one galaxy wasn't big enough.
And the definition of "Universe", from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy:
Bigger than the biggest thing ever and then some. Much bigger than that in fact, really amazingly immense, a totally stunning size, real "wow, that's big," time. Infinity is just so big that, by comparison, bigness itself looks really titchy. Gigantic multiplied by colossal multiplied by staggeringly huge is the sort of concept we're trying to get across here.
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It's a defence system made by hyperintelligent pan-dimensional beings to protect them from super black holes.
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We've had those before, where certain galaxies distort the emissions quite a bit.
I'll wait for the follow up science before I "worry".
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Ca a void be a structure? That doesn't seem like it would compile.
So Dr. Astrophysicist, what's that thing in space?
I don't know but I based my PHD thesis on it.
Well we can't very well redefine what everyone previously thought was the universe to a new more fitting name.
I mean look at how much and loudly you all bitched when we did that with the word "planet" so that our solar system didn't contain hundreds of thousands of planets.
Just imagine how much larger in scale the pluto levels of butt hurt would be if we redefined "universe" the same way?
I seem to be limited to reason. When space is defined as nothing I have all kinds of issues with nothing having an effect on a big pile of something. Maybe we need to get rid of the word space and go back 150 years and call space the ether or some other mysterious material. Or i could just make up some babble that some people will pretend to understand. Example: Space is the expression of the differential between dark matter and matter acted upon by both energy and dark energy. Now freshmen light your pipes and ponder the truth of my conjecture.
Furthest-most? When "furthest" is just not far enough?
Technically it should actually be "farthest" since it refers to a physical distance whereas "furthest" means most distant in a figurative sense. For example you say "furthest from the truth" not "farthest from the truth" but "Cape Spear is the farthest east you can go in Canada" not "furthest east". So to summarize: "furthest-most" should not have a hyphen, should not have the 'most' added since it is redundant and finally should actually be "farthest" since it refers to a physical distance.
As for the origin of the "cold spot" I understood that it was completely statistically consistent with quantum fluctuations in the early universe. So how about we rule out that explanation first before coming up with multiple universes or other crazy stuff.
The universe is full of voids - large regions of space empty of matter. Ever since the detection of the Cold Spot, it's been speculated that a "supervoid" could be responsible, but it was thought that a void that large would not fit current understandings of structure formation - essentially trading a too-cold spot in the CMB for a too-big hole in the matter distribution.
But this work, which was made public a year ago and just now got through the referee process, showed that there *is* a supervoid in the direction of the Cold Spot. They found it by looking at the distribution of galaxies in that direction. It turns out that it is a big void, but not very empty; more like a wide shallow dish than a small deep bowl. This can both explain the Cold Spot and be compatible with our understanding of how structure forms.
The universe is shaped as a donut. They have found the hole!