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Milky Way Is Being Pushed Across the Universe (cnn.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the across-the-universe dept.

dryriver quotes a report from CNN: Our home galaxy, the Milky Way, is being pushed across the universe by a large unseen force, according to new research. Although it may not seem like a friendly gesture, the newly discovered Dipole Repeller is actually helping our galaxy on its journey across the expanding universe. Researchers have known that the galaxy was moving at a relative speed for the past 30 years, but they didn't know why. "Now we find an emptiness in exactly the opposite direction, which provides a 'push' in the sense of a lack of pull," said Brent Tully, one of the study authors and an astronomer at the Institute for Astronomy in Honolulu. "In a tug-of-war, if there are more people at one end, then the flow will be toward them and away from the weaker side." But this is no aimless journey of motion. Researchers have long believed that our galaxy was attracted to an area rich with dozens of clusters of galaxies 750 million light-years away, called the Shapley Concentration or Shapley Attractor. "We found a flow pattern reminiscent of streams of water that are organized by gravity to run downhill," Tully said. "In detail, we played a mathematical trick by inverting the sense of gravity to see where flows would terminate in this altered case. Flows ended at our Dipole Repeller."

90 of 149 comments (clear)

  1. "Helping our galaxy on its journey" by Empiric · · Score: 1

    What does this even mean in a non-teleological universe?

    Wait, what does this even mean even in a teleological universe?

    --
    ~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
    1. Re:"Helping our galaxy on its journey" by Black+Parrot · · Score: 4, Informative

      What does this even mean in a non-teleological universe?

      "We're moving in the direction gravity is pulling us."

      --
      Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
    2. Re:"Helping our galaxy on its journey" by Galaga88 · · Score: 1

      Wait, what does this even mean even in a teleological universe?

      Milky Way got places to be, it ain't got no time for that.

    3. Re:"Helping our galaxy on its journey" by rgbatduke · · Score: 3, Informative

      Mod +1. This is the second or third time I've seen summaries of the press announcement, and the first time it has been even obliquely acknowledged that the so called "repeller" is nothing more than a localized lack of PULL, not any sort of actual gravitational "push". -1 to the article itself for being misleading bullshit and creating a "dipole" like an electron and an electron hole create a "dipole" in a uniform neutral metal, no more.

      Surely there is nothing surprising about this. People have been doing cosmological simulations for a LONG time with a large number of pointlike objects interacting with GMm/r^2 attractive forces but to simulate galactic evolution and universal evolution from the big bang. The interesting point being that in the center of a uniform mass distribution, there is no net force but nevertheless 1/r^2 forces with any kind of inhomogeneity in the underlying free mass distribution tends to accrete in some places and abandon others, especially if it can inelastically interact and clump together into bound subsystems. This must have been seen in simulations pretty much every time, and should come as no surprise in nature.

      --
      Even when the experts all agree, they may well be mistaken. --- Bertrand Russell.
    4. Re:"Helping our galaxy on its journey" by Potor · · Score: 1

      I was wondering how "help" crept into the science as well, and for the exact same reason.

    5. Re:"Helping our galaxy on its journey" by mysticgoat · · Score: 3, Interesting

      The approach being used that identifies the repulsor is a valid one. Bicycle mechanics have been using it since at least 1890 in practical work.

      When truing a bicycle wheel, it makes sense to talk about the push that a spoke exerts against the ground that keeps the wheel from collapsing. While you cannot push a string, the tensile pulling forces of all the spokes toward the top of the wheel are too complex to easily analyze. But fortunately it works out that you can invert your frame of reference and then not worry about those forces since in the inverted framework those tensile pulling forces become a single push through the one spoke that opposes the sum of the vectors of all the other spokes.

      A miniaturized bicycle mechanic standing on the inside surface of a wheel's rim could use this pushing vector to figure out where the hub of the wheel was. That is never done only because bicycle mechanics are big enough to eyeball the entire wheel. But scale the metaphor up....

      That is what is being done here. It is an interesting study, and much more than a theoretical sleight of hand. It suggests that the Milky Way is moving away from a specific point, which they are calling the "Dipole Repulsor", but which can also be described as the Center Of The Big Empty. I did not see anything in the article that suggests that we know how far away the COTBE is, but it looks like we at least know its direction from Earth, the Solar System, and the Milky Way. That's more than we knew before.

      It has long been understood that the universe is expanding like the surface of a balloon that is being inflated. This work suggests that we may now know the direction to the center of the (possibly local) universe. I'm not entirely sure of the scale of the implications... this could be on the scale of the Copernican Revolution.

    6. Re:"Helping our galaxy on its journey" by mysticgoat · · Score: 1

      Stop anthropomorphizing the Milky Way. She doesn't like that.

    7. Re:"Helping our galaxy on its journey" by FeelGood314 · · Score: 1

      Space is expanding at about 25km/s per million light years. That is to say if two objects are a million light years apart the space between them is expanding at 25km/s.

      Now it could be that mostly empty space expands faster than this or maybe there is some other thing that happens in mostly empty space. The point is that we see matter moving away from the "repeller" and it maps more closely to how you would see particles moving between poles of a magnet than just being attracted by one object.

    8. Re:"Helping our galaxy on its journey" by Pfhorrest · · Score: 1

      I think "center of the local universe" is going a bit far. To use a metaphor I used in another post further down, it's more like they've found the top of the nearest "hilltop" in the "rolling hilly countryside" that is the curvature of spacetime. The Shapley Attractor would similarly be the bottom of the nearest "valley". Both "hilltop" and "valley" in the sense that if you trace the lines that "water would flow" (to use the bit of good analogy the article does employ), they converge in a place downhill (the valley) and a place uphill (the hilltop). The Shapley Attractor is as much the "center of the local universe" as this "repulsor" is. They're just where the, what you might call them, "field lines of gravity" converge in the local gravity field.

      The "repulsor" is where something with negative gravity would float up to eventually, the same way that a hilltop is where a ball that rolled uphill would roll to.

      --
      -Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
      "I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
    9. Re:"Helping our galaxy on its journey" by mysticgoat · · Score: 1

      Your hills and valleys analogy has stronger legs than my bicycle analogy. I'll go with it. Thank you.

    10. Re:"Helping our galaxy on its journey" by Pfhorrest · · Score: 1

      Thank you. I did appreciate your bicycle analogy too, and didn't mean to put it down at all, just the "center of the universe" bit.

      --
      -Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
      "I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
    11. Re:"Helping our galaxy on its journey" by Coren22 · · Score: 1

      That almost leads into a "your momma so fat" joke...

      --
      APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
  2. Hm by backslashdot · · Score: 5, Interesting

    If I understood this right they are calling the lack of attraction, repulsion. There's no negative force, or dark energy style shit involved. Shouldn't they call it a non-attractor unless they show active repulsion? If I drop an object and it moves towards the ground I am not going to say my hand repelled it.

    1. Re:Hm by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 5, Informative

      If I understood this right they are calling the lack of attraction, repulsion.

      Yes, you understood it right. They also provide the analogy of a tug-o-war rope being "repulsed" by the end with fewer people tugging on it. That is the stupidest analogy I have heard all day. The rope, of course, is not being "pushed" and neither is the galaxy.

    2. Re:Hm by pushing-robot · · Score: 1

      It's really very simple: The Earth which could be above the object but isn't is pushing the object toward the Earth which could be below the object and is. You are a slow learner, Winston.

      --
      How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
    3. Re:Hm by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      If I understood this right they are calling the lack of attraction, repulsion. There's no negative force, or dark energy style shit involved. Shouldn't they call it a non-attractor unless they show active repulsion? If I drop an object and it moves towards the ground I am not going to say my hand repelled it.

      That is the wonderful thing about maths. Math can be both fun and insightful for a great number of things beyond simply 'describing reality'.

      You may say "This has 60% of some quantity" but that doesn't mean it in'ts equally true to say "This lacks 40% of some quantity" simply because you don't wish to describe it that way.
      So long as the percentages add up to 100, both statements are true.

      You are also making two very big mistakes in your assumptions, one of which I am going to fault you for.

      One, math does not need to be restricted to describing reality.
      You remind me of people that say "Computers should only exist to do X, and you are *wrong* for making software for any other purpose"

      Two of course is - stop putting words in other peoples mouths! And shame on you for doing so!
      These people never once claimed their math represents reality, and never claimed there is any such thing as a force of repulsion being proved here. You quite literally made that up and attributed that factually wrong statement as something they claimed.

      In this case they are using the math as a little game. Reverse your point of view and focus on the other side of the equation just purely to see what happens.
      After they did so, they were able to show not where gravity is pulling things, but where those things were prior to being pulled, thus showing more detail on the path they have traveled.

      The really interesting thing that came out of this is when they pretended the math was correct and actually looked through a telescope to the place in space indicated as the start of the trip for our galaxy.
      They noticed that, in reality, more galaxies than just ours are moving away from this point.

      This provides insight that wasn't thought to be looked for previously.

      Not only are there large clumps of mass gravitational pulling things to them, but there are also large areas with little to no mass they are being pulled away from.
      It has always been thought that galaxies are 'born' in high mass galactic clusters and flung out by forces such as super novas and such.
      We now have observational evidence this isn't always the case, which we did not have before.

      Being just a starting point for what to observe, clearly there are few if any conclusions beyond that we can draw from this, but we now have a better idea of places to look that very well may be more interesting than previously assumed.

      Maybe after checking the observations nothing comes of this, and this was just some strange coincidental anomaly that came out of the math for these two runs of numbers.
      Maybe it will turn out this will be a useful method to trace back the path of galaxies in more detail than we had before.

      But when you have trillions upon trillions of things in space to pick to look at, anything that can raise something to a higher priority instead of simply choosing at random is worth while.
      And whatever criteria you used to choose does not need to be some mathematical proof of a deeper explanation of reality, it's only requirement is pointing us in a direction to look that has some, any, amount of meaning behind it above just rolling the dice.

    4. Re:Hm by msauve · · Score: 1

      Also, mountains push water downhill. And, the sun and heavens move around the Earth, along very complex paths. HTH!

      --
      "National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
    5. Re:Hm by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      The ludicrousness of this becomes even more apparent when you think of actually pushing a rope.

      Indeed, "pushing rope" is slang for trying to have sex with half a hard on.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    6. Re:Hm by AthanasiusKircher · · Score: 1

      Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but the idea of a "repulsive force" makes some sense here if you are viewing things in relationship to the overall pattern of universe expansion and motion.

      That is, we know the Milky Way is moving at some velocity in relationship to the cosmic background radiation. If the cosmic background radiation can be thought of as the "stable earth" or whatever as a frame of reference, our galaxy is moving in relationship to it.

      If I understand this study correctly, it's been previously noted that our galaxy is moving in this manner partly because of a denser region of galaxies in the direction it's moving. But this study claims that the actual observed motion is ALSO due to the fact that there are FEWER galaxies than average (for the universe) pulling back from the other side.

      So, to go to the tug-of-war analogy, if you had equal numbers of people on both sides of the rope, our galaxy would be "static" in relationship to the cosmic background. (Still in motion, as the universe is expanding, but moving in exact accordance with the general tendencies of the universe as a whole.)

      Previously, we hypothesized that there's a cluster PULLING us and creating this other motion, equivalent to adding a few people on one side of the tug-of-war rope. But this paper is saying we ALSO have effectively taken away "people" from the other side of the rope, which results in an increase of net force toward the "more people" side.

      Saying this is "repulsion" makes a bit of sense in this case, because the frame of reference is that general motion of the universe, i.e., there IS already an assumed "tug of war" with space pulling this way and that. Since stuff in the universe BY DEFAULT feels this tug equally in all directions, the absence of it is the aberration -- effectively, a "repeller" from the expected default force.

    7. Re:Hm by Baloroth · · Score: 4, Informative

      Attractor and repeller are, in this case, being used as very technical terms to describe the behavior of those regions of space in the velocity field of the universe. Neither the repeller nor attractor needs to actually be exerting any physical force at all.

      --
      "None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
    8. Re:Hm by Pfhorrest · · Score: 2

      I think the (mildly) interesting thing here is hidden behind all the bad analogies, but they actually do mention a tiny bit of a good analogy.

      Say you're a ball on a hill in a rolling hilly countryside, and so under gravity you're rolling downhill. You can easily calculate where you will eventually settle, when you reach some local elevation minimum too deep for your kinetic energy to escape you from. You can find those minima by "seeing where water would flow", which is the tiny bit of good analogy they touch on a little bit.

      It sounds like what they've done is traced those "water flow paths" through the "rolling countryside" that is the curvature of spacetime, and followed the path that runs through our galaxy backwards until it converges with a bunch of other paths at the local "elevation" minimum. This gives you, in this better analogy, the analogue of the nearest hilltop, from which everything rolls away.

      But not because hilltops repel things. Just because they are uphill, and things naturally roll downhill. But still, kinda interesting to know where the nearest "hilltop" in space is, I guess?

      --
      -Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
      "I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
    9. Re:Hm by cellocgw · · Score: 1

      If I understood this right they are calling the lack of attraction, repulsion. There's no negative force, or dark energy style shit involved. Shouldn't they call it a non-attractor unless they show active repulsion?

      Despite what some of the other answers have ranted in agreement, this is a not-uncommon phraseology in science and engineering. Maybe a few of you have heard of holes propagating in a semiconductor, for example. Try not to get all wound up about a simple way to describe system behavior using simple analogies.

      --
      https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
    10. Re:Hm by T.E.D. · · Score: 1

      They also provide the analogy of a tug-o-war rope being "repulsed" by the end with fewer people tugging on it. That is the stupidest analogy I have heard all day. The rope, of course, is not being "pushed" and neither is the galaxy.

      This explains why Physicists never win in the interdepartmental tog-o-war contests.

    11. Re:Hm by FeelGood314 · · Score: 1
      No!

      ...hey are calling the lack of attraction, repulsion...

      They are not calling a lack of attraction a repulsion. They are specifically showing that this is not the case. They have mapped the velocities of objects and objects are moving from the Dipole Repeller to the Shapley Attractor but the velocities indicate that gravitational pull is not the only force in play. There might not be a force pushing objects away from the Dipole Repeller but objects are acting like they are being repelled. i.e. they are accelerating away from the Dipole Repeller.

      We do know at very large distances (such as the ones here) that space is actually expanding. Two objects stationary to each other a million light years apart will see the space between them increase at about 25km/s. As the objects get further apart the rate the distance between the object increases increases. That is to say the objects would appear to be accelerating away from each other.

    12. Re:Hm by Tablizer · · Score: 1

      It does seem like they are calling a lack of stuff in one direction a pushing or repelling force. By that thinking, our sky is a "pushing force" also because there is very little stuff there (nearby) compared to the ground (Earth).

      "Dark Nothing"?

      Dark matter, dark energy, dark gravity, I suspect there is dark bullshit going on; the Aether(s) of our time. Now they are using it for nothingness too.

      Dark Fad.

      --
      Table-ized A.I.
    13. Re:Hm by david_thornley · · Score: 1

      Well, you see, the other comments around it sucked, because they were stupid, so if we reverse the math we can describe stupid posts as the norm and ones that lack stupidity as expanding or something.

      --
      "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
    14. Re:Hm by lucien86 · · Score: 1

      It is real repulsion, only it is differential repulsion rather than direct repulsion.

      --
      Below the speed of light Special Relativity is one of the most accurate theories in physics - above the speed of light..
  3. Re: Exactly how does this affect my life? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    You've stumbled onto the wrong site, this is the site you are looking for: https://www.reddit.com

  4. It's all relative by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    "Researchers have known that the galaxy was moving at a relative speed"

    Relative to *what* though?

    1. Re:It's all relative by war4peace · · Score: 1

      Relative, as in "non-absolute" :)

      --
      ...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
    2. Re: It's all relative by joao.cordeiro · · Score: 3, Informative

      If you read the article, you can find in less then 30s that its relative to background radiation.

  5. Still lacking an answer... by limaCAT76 · · Score: 1

    Are there pretty ladies in the Shapley Attractor?

    1. Re:Still lacking an answer... by war4peace · · Score: 2

      if there were, it should have been called "Shapely Attractor".

      --
      ...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
    2. Re:Still lacking an answer... by Opportunist · · Score: 2

      Oh please, that's just marketing. Remember "Greenland"?

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    3. Re:Still lacking an answer... by geekmux · · Score: 1

      Oh please, that's just marketing. Remember "Greenland"?

      Yes. Tends to make you wonder if this is the true origin of all bullshit in marketing, given that "Iceland" exists...

  6. "... distances of ~20,000kms1 or more" ??? by aglider · · Score: 2

    This is what I read from the original article. To my very limited ability to understand, it seems that "Km s-1" is a speed, not a distance. As stated, by the way, a few words earlier in "V CMB = 631±20kms1". Surely I am wrong. Or maybe they are.

    --
    Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
    1. Re: "... distances of ~20,000kms1 or more" ??? by joao.cordeiro · · Score: 1

      Yea, i stoped at the same point...
      It is definitly wrong to say it like that.
      But, with some context it could be acceptable.
      If you show a clear relation between distance and speed then you could refere as a distance where speed is X.
      But becouse they are talking about 10^3 on onside and 10^5 on the other, i think it is a simple mistake in units.

    2. Re:"... distances of ~20,000kms1 or more" ??? by khallow · · Score: 1

      I think they're speaking of the net red shift of the object which is crudely proportional to distance as far as we know.

    3. Re: "... distances of ~20,000kms1 or more" ??? by joao.cordeiro · · Score: 1

      Well, as i said, in a context it could make sense. But a redshift is not a distance, it is a velocity that can be used to calculate a distance.

    4. Re:"... distances of ~20,000kms1 or more" ??? by AthanasiusKircher · · Score: 4, Informative

      This is what I read from the original article. To my very limited ability to understand, it seems that "Km s-1" is a speed, not a distance.

      You may want to read up on the Hubble constant. When talking about large distances in the universe, there is no direct way to measure them. Instead, we measure red shift. Red shift is used to calculate velocity. Velocity is used to calculate distance. There are various assumptions at each stage of calculations.

      And then there are other complexities about what you actually mean by "distance." Astronomers have various ways to calculate it, but it's complicated by relativistic effects, not to mention the problem of how to talk about distance in relationship to things where you only know where they were by light that left millions or billions of years ago. So, are you talking about distance "then" or "now" or something else? And there's the fact that space is actually expanding over time, so are you talking about "proper" distance or comoving distance. And your calculated "distance" could depend on the exact cosmological model you're using and assumptions about the future development of the universe.

      To avoid some of those complications, it's more accurate to report the actual measurement you're taking when talking about "distance," which is redshift. Or you could go one step further and calculate the Hubble velocity based on the redshift, while ignoring the complications of "distance" mentioned above. That's what is being done here -- and it's quite common in astronomical literature. If you had bothered to read to the end of the second paragraph, you'll discover they actually explain this: "The Cosmicflows-2 dataset of galaxy distances provides reasonably dense coverage to R ~= 10,000 km s-1 (distances are expressed in terms of their equivalent Hubble velocity)."

      I agree with you that it would probably have been clearer to people unfamiliar with this usage to put that explanation after the very first use of the Hubble velocity as distance... I assume they probably just didn't want to do that because stylistically it clutters the very first sentence of their article.

    5. Re:"... distances of ~20,000kms1 or more" ??? by AthanasiusKircher · · Score: 1

      Actually, re-reading it, I assume that despite the fact that the link labels the whole first section as "Abstract" that actually the first paragraph is intended to be the abstract. The "second paragraph" is actually then the first paragraph of the introduction to the article. So they actually DO put the explanation after the first usage of the units in the article proper. Since abstracts are supposed to be short, they omitted this explanation -- as most people who would read such an article should understand it anyway.

    6. Re:"... distances of ~20,000kms1 or more" ??? by aglider · · Score: 1

      I've got the point, mates. Thanks.
      The problem is still the same: don't change the name of the things and don't assign new and different meanings to names!
      If it's a speed, then it can be m*s-1, if it's a distance, then it's m.
      If you need a different concept, then use its name and its definition.
      A distance is a distance is a distance is a distance!

      --
      Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
  7. Isn't this a kind of proof that gravity is push? by little1973 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I think space itself is some kind of medium and not necessarily matter based. Currently, its composition is unknown. You can call this medium aether if you like, just do not confuse it with the luminiferous aether. There are several aether theories out there, one of the popular ones is the Superfluid Vacuum Theory.

    Now, back to gravity. We know since Einstein that matter curves/disturbs space**. So, this medium, which is disturbed by matter, wants to be 'smooth' and it exerts a force on matter. This force is obviously a push force and we call it gravity.

    From our perspective there is no way to differentiate between pull or push. Maybe until now.

    ** I know that according to GR gravity is a curvature of space-time and not just space. But if space itself is some kind of medium then the time dimension simply does not exist. What happens is that the disturbance of space prevents matter particles to interact with each other. We perceive this lack of interaction as if 'time' slow down since there is no change (We can only perceive 'time' by observing change). This picture is compatible with GR since relativity between moving bodies through space remains. However, it establishes a distinguished reference frame which is space itself.

    --
    Government cannot make man richer, but it can make him poorer. - Ludwig von Mises
  8. It's the most powerful force in the universe... by Zaatxe · · Score: 5, Funny

    ... love!

    --
    So say we all
    1. Re:It's the most powerful force in the universe... by tigersha · · Score: 4, Funny

      You know why Hurricanes are named after women? When they arrive they are all wet and wild and when they leave they take your house, your card and everything else.

      So much for your theory then.

      --
      The dangers of excessive individualism are nothing compared to the oppressiveness of excessive collectivism
    2. Re:It's the most powerful force in the universe... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Yea, it is the only force in the world that men spend billions upon billions of dollars on to obtain and never ever get.

  9. Re:Exactly how does this affect my life? by Opportunist · · Score: 1

    You shouldn't invest in that real estate in Georgia, for Georgia is where we'll collide with Planet IX-533 in roughly 55.2 billion years.

    --
    We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  10. Re:Or more than one universe by Opportunist · · Score: 1

    And as soon as you have any kind of indication for this to possibly hold some water, we might even discuss it.

    That's the point about science. Yes, we can all come up with all sorts of wacky ideas, don't worry, but in the end, what counts is to be able to at least show that it could be true.

    What you're doing here is the equivalent of speculating what was before the Big Bang. There is no way whatsoever to even possibly begin to falsify your claim. And claims that cannot be tested are worthless from a scientific point of view.

    Provide a test for your hypothesis or, sorry for be so blunt, get out of the way for someone who can provide one for his.

    --
    We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  11. Re:Beware the Cosmic Drain! by Joce640k · · Score: 4, Informative

    "Now we find an emptiness in exactly the opposite direction, which provides a 'push' in the sense of a lack of pull," said Brent Tully, one of the study authors and an astronomer at the Institute for Astronomy in Honolulu. "In a tug-of-war, if there are more people at one end, then the flow will be toward them and away from the weaker side."

    But ... that doesn't mean the weaker team is 'pushing', does it?

    (facepalm)

    --
    No sig today...
  12. Pesky titans! by GeekWithAKnife · · Score: 1


    I know I shouldn't care. Us mortals will not live to find out what happened...not even our children's children...but it's the principle damn it.

    Stop playing tug-of-war with my galaxy! if you're not careful you'll push/pull/repulse/attract it off the side of the universe!

    --
    A 'singular oddity' is an event that cannot be explained and only happens when you are alone.
  13. Re:Exactly how does this affect my life? by Maritz · · Score: 1

    Do you expect the rest of us to give a shit about whether you give a shit? Because I don't.

    As one of New Scientists' most successful editors once said "Science is interesting, and if you don't agree you can fuck off."

    So go ahead, fuck off.

    --
    I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
  14. CNN fake news by Dunbal · · Score: 1

    CNN has just discovered that gravity, an innate property of matter, is suspiciously absent from empty regions which are empty because they lack matter.

    --
    Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
  15. Re:Or more than one universe by Maritz · · Score: 1

    Pretty much nothing you say follows on from the previous thing you say. Like, none of it. This isn't just about making shit up. It has to hold together. Yours doesn't.

    --
    I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
  16. Re:Isn't this a kind of proof that gravity is push by Maritz · · Score: 1

    In Einstein's theory, the Earth IS pushing up on you.

    --
    I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
  17. They are not that bad. by 140Mandak262Jamuna · · Score: 3, Funny
    This is the difference between humans and other advanced civilizations.

    If humans want to build a highway, they just build it and don't bother too much about the disruptions and dislocations caused. Despite what you might have heard about them sneakily filing a redevelopment plan and filing it in a dark basement guarded by leopards, in reality they move the entire galaxy away before embarking on such a project. We are just beginning to understand them.

    --
    sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
  18. Re:Isn't this a kind of proof that gravity is push by 140Mandak262Jamuna · · Score: 2

    We should add warning labels to all our physics books that Relativity is "just a theory" and give equal time to alternative explanations,like the "Intelligent-falling-ism"

    --
    sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
  19. Causing by joao.cordeiro · · Score: 1

    I bet this is causing global warming, instead of human activity.

  20. Re:Exactly how does this affect my life? by Oswald+McWeany · · Score: 1

    Do you mean Georgia the American state, or do you mean Georgia the country?

    Or Georgia, the chubby girl I went to school with?

    --
    "That's the way to do it" - Punch
  21. Re:cause by by Oswald+McWeany · · Score: 1

    Midi chlorians.

    --
    "That's the way to do it" - Punch
  22. Re: cause by by Entrope · · Score: 1

    I'm not saying it's aliens, but... it's aliens.

  23. Re:Spaceship Earth by RabidReindeer · · Score: 1

    There's a PARTY over there! Let's Go!

  24. Re:Exactly how does this affect my life? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Do you mean Georgia the American state, or do you mean Georgia the country?

    Or Georgia, the chubby girl I went to school with?

    It's all the same, ending with you crying, holding a tube sock and a tub of vaseline while browsing pr0nhub on a Friday night.

  25. Re:Exactly how does this affect my life? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    You've stumbled onto the wrong site, this is the site you are looking for: https://www.reddit.com/

  26. Across the Universe by Translation+Error · · Score: 1

    Nothing's gonna change my world...

    --
    When someone says, "Any fool can see ..." they're usually exactly right.
  27. Re: Isn't this a kind of proof that gravity is pus by Dareth · · Score: 1

    What about those fat bottom cursive two's. Adding two of them together could be closer to 5 than the sum of a pair of little skinny two's.

    --

    I only look human.
    My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
  28. Re:Or more than one universe by dreamchaser · · Score: 1

    Very true, but intuitively I know that the 'Big Bang' started with a box of spaghetti and some boiling water.

  29. Re:Exactly how does this affect my life? by rgbatduke · · Score: 1

    "I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today."

    So, only really expensive designer brainburning drugs for you, eh? Or is it cheap brain enhancing drugs (he says, sipping his coffee...:-)

    rgb

    --
    Even when the experts all agree, they may well be mistaken. --- Bertrand Russell.
  30. In other shocking news: Stars shine! by celtic_hackr · · Score: 1

    I find this whole story not very attractive.

  31. The Dipole Repellers by neo-mkrey · · Score: 2

    Great name for a band.

  32. Re:Blackholes don't have strong gravity by Agent0013 · · Score: 2

    Right! And what we call light bulbs are actually dark suckers. They suck in the dark so you end up with light left over.

    --

    -- ssoorrrryy,, dduupplleexx sswwiittcchh oonn.. -Quote found on actual fortune cookie.
  33. But we're flush with success! by fyngyrz · · Score: 1

    As we get closer to the Dipole Repeller, we will discover our galaxy and all the rest are slowly circling the cosmic drain.

    I have not received any such information from either the elephants or the turtle. Therefore, I doubt the veracity of this.

    However, should it prove to be true, I suggest we destroy all the observatories so this can never happen again.

    --
    I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
  34. Re:Exactly how does this affect my life? by Potor · · Score: 1

    I can't believe you came here to post this (unless there is some irony I am not detecting). Anyway, science is most truly science when it is about pure knowledge, and not about application to life.

  35. Re: Isn't this a kind of proof that gravity is pus by Rakarra · · Score: 1

    What about those fat bottom cursive two's. Adding two of them together could be closer to 5 than the sum of a pair of little skinny two's.

    That's what happens when you Round your numbers.

  36. Re:Isn't this a kind of proof that gravity is push by orgelspieler · · Score: 1

    dude, you need to lay off the time cube for a while.

  37. Re:Beware the Cosmic Drain! by minstrelmike · · Score: 1

    Haven't scientists the world over have known since Sir Isaac Newton that gravity is a one way force? Does this guy even know what he is talking about?

    There is no push and pull of gravity.

    or possibility B. We've learned something new in the last 300 years.

  38. Re:Beware the Cosmic Drain! by minstrelmike · · Score: 1

    It doesn't matter either way. It wouldn't change our reality.

    How would you know?

  39. Re:Beware the Cosmic Drain! by minkwe · · Score: 1

    If you find yourself moving, look ahead and then look behind. If it is a push, there will be more stuff behind us. if it is a pull, there will be more stuff in front of us. This is important because it is unlikely that any attractive forces are fundamental, which means all apparent attraction is simply a side-effect of repulsion. This discovery adds to the body of evidence supporting that idea. The next challenge is, we need to prove that gravity is not an attractive force but the side-effect of a more fundamental repulsive force.

    --
    "Fighting terrorists with millitary might is like killing a mosquitor on your Dad's forehead with a rifle."
  40. Re:Blackholes don't have strong gravity by AthanasiusKircher · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Right! And what we call light bulbs are actually dark suckers.

    You can joke if you wish, but in physics you may have heard of something called a "frame of reference," which specifies the default state you assume. That's not quite analogous to what TFA is doing, but it's something like that.

    Newtonian physics assumes a default frame of reference that has no forces in it. Hence, we only talk about forces "existing" when they are non-zero.

    But this "no forces" frame of reference doesn't really make sense when talking about the universe on large scales. Instead, the default state of the universe is a general curvature of space-time that galaxies exist within. You could perhaps think of it has a general "slope" on the rubber sheet model of spacetime. Or, if you insist on the tug-of-war analogy, the "default" state is with a certain level of tension. If you grew up as part of a "rope" within a universe like that, you'd probably develop a system of physics where the default "frame of reference" included tension forces pulling at you on both sides.

    Anyhow, the "push" and "pull" and gravity doesn't quite make sense in terms of our normal analogy of grabbing onto something and physically pushing or pulling it. Rather, thinking of spacetime as curved, we change the slope. In the case of TFA, we have the default "slope" that pervades the universe, and previous research says our galaxy is moving in direction X more than the slope would suggest due to increased curvature in that direction. But it turns out there's also decreased curvature in another direction, which effectively decreases the threshold of the "default slope" in that direction.

    If you lived as a "rope" in a continuous tug-of-war game since the beginning of time, which mostly had a default "tension" pulling at you from all sides... then you'd likely perceive a decreased tension as a "push" too. Since the whole "push/pull" thing is a bad analogy for gravitational spacetime curvature on a cosmic scale anyway, I'm not sure why everyone here is making fun of a bad analogy while upholding their bad analogy. They're both seriously flawed in this case.

  41. Re:Isn't this a kind of proof that gravity is push by T.E.D. · · Score: 1

    I think space itself is some kind of medium and not necessarily matter based. Currently, its composition is unknown. You can call this medium aether if you like, just do not confuse it with the luminiferous aether. There are several aether theories out there, one of the popular ones is the Superfluid Vacuum Theory.

    I guess its really true that everything old is new again

  42. We are still going to crash into Andromeda by Tighe_L · · Score: 1

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

  43. wtf ? by kjhambrick · · Score: 1

    And I feel myself being pushed thru my chair by a strange force located someplace above my head ... wtf is this strange repulsive force ?

    Geebus !

    1. Re:wtf ? by david_thornley · · Score: 1

      It's actually this electromagnetic repulsive force that keeps pushing you out of your proper worldline, meaning the one you'd follow through spacetime if there was no outside force (if you were in free fall). This is caused by the distortion of spacetime that makes worldlines tend to go near the center of the mass, and the fact that the mass repels itself electromagnetically at close range.

      --
      "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
  44. re: Milky Way Is Being Pushed Across the Universe by rickyslashdot · · Score: 1

    This HAS to be the best thing ever - all I will have to do is make sure there is nobody behind me and I can get my car to propel itself forward with NO FUEL EXPENDITURE - - - better than any application of 'flux capacitors'.
    Just imagine, with nothing behind you, your mileage will go off the chart, since it won't require any fuel or engine usage to get you moving into the vast frontiers of ANY spatial locale, and all without ANY requirement for fuel ! ! !
    Hell of a revolution in the physics arena, since you can travel anywhere, with no fuel or engine - - - AS LONG AS THERE IS NOTHING BEHIND YOU - - - _ROFLMAO_

    Sorry, but this really tickled my warped sense of humor, and I just HAD to plop this post into the slashdot (ces)pool to see how many others got a good, beer-twisted, mind-boggling laugh out of it !

    cheers, chug a few more, and take a dive off the deep end !

    --
    redneck geek
  45. Re:Blackholes don't have strong gravity by david_thornley · · Score: 1

    In some cases, you can reformulate the math in a model so it's easier to work with at the cost of becoming non-intuitive. I don't know if this is one of those cases, but it's possible that treating empty space as a repulsor made it easier to calculate something.

    --
    "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
  46. "The Shapely" attractor....Daisy, my 2nd wife by abmw · · Score: 1

    The galaxy is being pushed across the universe. That's why they dropped me here.

  47. Ummm, coffee, anyone?! by martinfb · · Score: 1

    I up for a cup of non-decaffeinated coffee.

    This provides a 'boost' where there is a lack of 'sedating matter'!

    --


    Self-importance and self-indulgence is the root of ALL evil.
  48. An implicit claim of repulsion by GPS+Pilot · · Score: 1

    These people never once claimed their math represents reality, and never claimed there is any such thing as a force of repulsion being proved here.

    To be fair, they named this thing that isn't doing any repelling the "Dipole Repeller." That's an implicit claim of repulsion.

    --
    That that is is that that that that is not is not.
    1. Re:An implicit claim of repulsion by lucien86 · · Score: 1

      Differential repulsion.

      --
      Below the speed of light Special Relativity is one of the most accurate theories in physics - above the speed of light..
  49. Re:Beware the Cosmic Drain! by lucien86 · · Score: 1

    The push is created by differential attraction. The repeller is an area empty of matter which means that there is less gravitational pull from that area, the net result is a push..

    It is very debateable whether true negative gravity exists, however all it requires is a negative curvature of space / space time so is theoretically possible.. Negative gravity could exist in certain conditions inside wormholes - or as the theoretical 'white' holes.

    --
    Below the speed of light Special Relativity is one of the most accurate theories in physics - above the speed of light..
  50. Re:Exactly how does this affect my life? by syntotic · · Score: 1

    But, will the form of the Galaxy be changed by this? In one framework this does affect your life... like in from an armed galaxy into a globular cluster one...