Monday, March 10, 2008

Gaping hole in universe

Astronomers conclude a cold region in the constellation
Eridanus is caused by a hole in the universe nearly
one billion light-years across.
Provided by University of Minnesota
From Space.com

The universe has a huge hole in it that dwarfs anything else of its kind. The discovery caught astronomers by surprise.

The hole is nearly a billion light-years across. It is not a black hole, which is a small sphere of densely packed matter. Rather, this one is mostly devoid of stars, gas and other normal matter, and it's also strangely empty of the mysterious "dark matter" that permeates the cosmos. Other space voids have been found before, but nothing on this scale.

Astronomers don't know why the hole is there.

"Not only has no one ever found a void this big, but we never even expected to find one this size," said researcher Lawrence Rudnick of the University of Minnesota.

Rudnick's colleague Liliya R. Williams also had not anticipated this finding.

"What we've found is not normal, based on either observational studies or on computer simulations of the large-scale evolution of the universe," said Williams, also of the University of Minnesota.

The finding will be detailed in the Astrophysical Journal.

Full story at Space.com

also at Astronomy.com

8 comments:

tina FCD said...

Isn't it just amazing!

CyberKitten said...

How strange....... Maybe they've found Heaven... [rotflmao]

Stardust said...

cyberkitten, you know I was thinking all kinds of smartass thoughts. Like maybe they found God's home, or maybe hell...LOL!

Maybe it's like Neverending Story and the "nothing" is coming to eat us all up into oblivion?

Spirula said...

Hey, looks like the found that intelligent designer thingy. Cause, just like intelligent design theory, it exists but doesn't have any substance.

Tommykey said...

WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE!

Stardust said...

Hey, looks like the found that intelligent designer thingy. Cause, just like intelligent design theory, it exists but doesn't have any substance.

Drumroll and high hat...ta da! LOL!
Good one!

Stardust said...

WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE!

The end of times is coming to get us.

Maybe it's like on Stargate...a gateway to another universe. The universe is quite awesome and horrible at the same time.

Anonymous said...

Very interesting, and - lol - I like your "the nothing" reference from the never-ending story!