Astronomers Find a Hole in the Universe

Astronomers Find a Hole in the Universe





By SETH BORENSTEIN
The Associated Press
Friday, August 24, 2007; 7:45 AM



WASHINGTON -- Astronomers have stumbled upon a tremendous hole in the universe. That's got them scratching their heads about what's just not there. The cosmic blank spot has no stray stars, no galaxies, no sucking black holes, not even mysterious dark matter. It is 1 billion light years across of nothing. That's an expanse of nearly 6 billion trillion miles of emptiness, a University of Minnesota team announced Thursday.

Astronomers have known for many years that there are patches in the universe where nobody's home. In fact, one such place is practically a neighbor, a mere 2 million light years away. But what the Minnesota team discovered, using two different types of astronomical observations, is a void that's far bigger than scientists ever imagined.
"This is 1,000 times the volume of what we sort of expected to see in terms of a typical void," said Minnesota astronomy professor Lawrence Rudnick, author of the paper that will be published in Astrophysical Journal. "It's not clear that we have the right word yet ... This is too much of a surprise."

Rudnick was examining a sky survey from the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, which essentially takes radio pictures of a broad expanse of the universe. But one area of the universe had radio pictures indicating there was up to 45 percent less matter in that region, Rudnick said.

The rest of the matter in the radio pictures can be explained as stars and other cosmic structures between here and the void, which is about 5 to 10 billion light years away.

Rudnick then checked observations of cosmic microwave background radiation and found a cold spot. The only explanation, Rudnick said, is it's empty of matter.

It could also be a statistical freak of nature, but that's probably less likely than a giant void, said James Condon, an astronomer at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory. He wasn't part of Rudnick's team but is following up on the research.

"It looks like something to be taken seriously," said Brent Tully, a University of Hawaii astronomer who wasn't part of this research but studies the void closer to Earth.

Tully said astronomers may eventually find a few cosmic structures in the void, but it would still be nearly empty.

Holes in the universe probably occur when the gravity from areas with bigger mass pull matter from less dense areas, Tully said. After 13 billion years "they are losing out in the battle to where there are larger concentrations of matter," he said.

Retired NASA astronomer Steve Maran said of the discovery: "This is incredibly important for something where there is nothing to it."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/24/AR2007082400600.html

 

These people have no idea what they're looking at.They've got new toys and think they know everything now.

Besides, what they see is a snapshot taken billions of years ago. One has to imagine things have changes abit since.


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hitman38, I remembered reading that article on Yahoo News. That much emptiness of space extending for billions of light years... But you have to admit, xexon made a point when he said "they see is a snapshot taken billions of years ago" since it could be different at this time in reality rather than seeing it as it was billions of years ago.

 

that very true i just copyed and pasted it from ID the further you look back in space you are seeing things that happen millions and billions of years ago

 

it could just be something that has been gravitationally prism'd into looking like nothingness

there are too many variables in a great big universe for me to believe anything from one university, if EVERYONE was looking at it, and a massivly peer reviewed paper showed up, taking into account every freak occurence we know of (which I KNOW they didn't do, there are only a hand full of experts on gravitational prisming on earth to refer to my prior example, and I doubt any of them have taken a look at this)

 

what a beautiful picture -its photoshopped tho isnt it or are kittens really that small?

 

Photoshop.

Whoever did it did a great job. I really had to study it to find any flaws.

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