I took this last night.
Posted on 08/05/2010 12:30:09 PM PDT by LibWhacker
The apparent development of a large void of some billion light-years in diameter in the Constellation Eridanus appears to be improbable given current cosmological models. A radical and controversial theory proposes that it is a "universe-in-mass black hole" rather than hypothetical dark matter responsible for the phenomenon described as the expanding-accelerating universe. This radical theory of cosmology suggests that stars at the edge of the Hubble length universe are being consumed by a universe-in-mass black hole.
In August of 2007, astronomers at the University of Minnesota located a gigantic hole in the universe. This empty space, stretching nearly a billion light-years across, is devoid of any matter such as galaxies, stars, and gas, and neither does it contain the strange and mysterious dark matter, which can be detected but not seen.
Empty places in the universe are not uncommon. It is already known that matter tends to clump and form stars and galaxies, clusters and superclusters, due to the pulling force of gravity. So astronomers have already seen places in the universe where there are groups of matter and places where matter is more scarce. But this new discovery is much larger than any previously known "hole".
“Not only has no one ever found a void this big, but we never even expected to find one this size,” explains Lawrence Rudnick of the University of Minnesota. Rudnick was one of the researchers to find the hole.
Rudnick and his team studied data from a survey of the entire sky imaged by the Very Large Array radio telescope. A map of this area of the sky was already known to be an anomaly. It had been called a "cold spot" after a satellite that charts the cosmic microwave background radiation discovered it was less warm than its surroundings. (Overall the cosmic microwave background radiation is exceptionally cold, and the difference seen was only in millionths of a degree.)
The area of sky in which the hole exists lies in the direction of the constellation Eridanus. Eridanus is the constellation of the River, and can be found winding below Taurus and Cetus.
But the hole is not a part of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation, which is a remnant of the Big Bang. The hole lies between six to 10 billion light-years away. The cold spot is a result of the CMB radition passing through this blank area on its way to Earth. Supporters of the standard model Big Bang theory say the region is colder because of dark energy.
Dark energy, which has yet to be verified, can be seen as the opposite of gravity. While gravity pulls matter together, dark energy is what is causing the universe to expand, and at an ever-increasing rate. When the radiation from the Big Bang passed through this void in the universe, it had less energy than the radiation that passed through normal regions of space. In a simplistic explanation, the radiation is given a boost when it nears the pull of matter such as galaxies, and dark energy allows the radiation to propel away from these areas without losing the boost when gravity would pull it back. The radiation passing through the empty space does not get the boost and the energy, therefore it is slightly colder.
A contrary theory proposed in The Journal of Cosmology suggests that our observable universe orbits a super-supermassive hole just as the stars of entire galaxies orbit and eventually are swallowed by the supermassive black holes at their center. Like the stars closest to the black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy which have a greater velocity than stars on the outer arms (where the Earth is located), stars at the edge of our known, Hubble-length universe, orbit one of these "universe-in-mass holes" at a greater velocity than those stars further away thus effecting the red shift and dimness of light and creating the illusion the universe is accelerating and exanding.
The illusion of an "accelerating universe" is due to the gravitational effects of a universe-in-mass black hole at the edge of our Hubble length universe. Stars closest to the hole accelerate to their doom.
Galaxies, stars, planets, moons, molecules, atoms, and so on, are continually recreated and destroyed, and matter and energy, including hydrogen atoms, are continually recycled and reassembled via activities associated with "black holes" also known as graviton-holes, gravity holes, super massive black holes, galaxy-in-mass gravity holes, and universe-in-mass gravity holes, depending on their size and gravity-mass.
In an infinite universe, these galaxy-in-mass black holes become more massive yet and eventually consume all the galaxies which have been caught up by its increasing gravitational grip . Once all surrounding galaxies have been consumed, all that is left is a void, a galaxy-in-mass gravity-hole in the fabric of space-time surrounded by eternal night and empty space.
The billion-light-years across "Eridanus black hole" is typical of black holes which have the gravity-mass of millions of entire galaxies. The Eridanus black hole sits like a giant black spider in an ocean of nothingness, having swallowed up all surrounding galaxies, gas, and light, including radiation from the Cosmic Microwave Background.
Based on an analysis of the NRAO VLA Sky Survey data, Rudnick and his team in fact discovered that there was a significant and rather remarkable absence of galaxies even in the distant space surrounding this hole, in the constellation of Eridanus. Thus, the billion-light-years across "Eridnus black hole" must have consumed the gravity-mass of millions of entire galaxies all of which have been collapsed and concentrated into the singularity of this super-galactic hole.
The billion-light-years across "Eridanus black hole" should not be considered unique or as something abnormally large. There appears to be a gravity-hole which may contain the collective mass of all the galaxies which populate a Hubble length universe and which sits just outside our known Hubble length universe; that is, just beyond that region of space which can be observed.
Elsewhere, Is the he VIRGOHI21 black hole an example of what happens when the gravitional mass of an entire galaxy comes to be bound up in the singularity of a single black hole which becomes a galactic orphan devoid of any stars but which would then begin to draw distant galaxies toward it? Stars and entire galaxies are recycled. Stars grow old and die, becoming white dwarfs, brown dwarfs and black holes (Hawking 1990), all of which eventually, in an infinite universe, are swallowed by the supermassive black hole at the galactic center which becomes even more massive in size until all stars, young and old, within its galaxy, disappear inside.
VIRGOHI21 has swallowed all the stars of its galaxy and has the gravity of an entire galaxy, an estimated total mass of about 1/10th the Milky Way, ten times more dark matter than ordinary matter, and is surrounded by vast clouds of hydrogen. Because of its galaxy-in-mass gravity, VIRGOHI21 has pulled up to 2000 galaxies toward it, creating the Virgo Cluster.
More recently, in March 2009, astronomers using the the 1.2-metre UK Schmidt Telescope in Australia published a paper which revealed the discovery of an even larger, 3.5- billion-year-wide void while undertaking the Six Degree Field Galaxy Survey in the southern hemisphere. Enormous cosmic voids and giant concentrations of matter have been observed in a new galaxy survey, one of the biggest completed so far. One of the voids is so large that it is difficult to explain where it came from.
Scientists are still analysing the new map, but a few features stand out immediately. The biggest concentration of matter seen by the survey is a previously known giant pileup of galaxies called the Shapley supercluster, which lies about 600 million light years from Earth.
The survey also found some enormous voids – regions of space that are relatively empty, including one that is about 3.5 billion light years across.
"This is as big as I've ever seen," survey team member John Huchra of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics told New Scientist.
Just a dumb guess on my part, I'll be the first to admit.
But it would tickle me to think maybe, maybe, maybe I'm right!
>>Time was also created in the big bang.
>
>Sorry but that’s idiotic, time is a continuum.
Why is it idiotic? Isn’t time measured in the relative changes between two [or more] objects? If there are less than two objects in the universe then how would time impact that single object? (This singular object would be ‘atomic’ in the absolute sense of the word, nothing smaller or sub-component would exist... otherwise there would be more than one actual object, which we have limited ourselves to.)
>ASSUMING a belief in the idiotic big bang theory, then you might claim that the physical material basis to MEASURE time would have existed only after the big bang, but time stretches to infinity in both directions.
Does it now? Where is your proof of that assertion? Couldn’t time just as well be a straight line segment or [geometrically-speaking] a ray? If time is infinite in both directions, then are there cycles? If there *ARE* cycles wouldn’t it be more convenient/accurate to represent time as a circle? If there are no cycles then doesn’t the second law of thermodynamics guarantee a future-state where the universe is absolutely homogeneous? (And, in that case, what would be the point/purpose of time past that point?)
The guy started turning up examples of combinations of very high and very low redshift objects which were clearly connected and part and parcel of the same things (meaning that the standard interpretation of redshift to mean expansion is garbage) and for that he was given the heave-ho out of American observatories and then was picked up by the Max Planck Institute, sort of like the fairytale of the ugly duckling which turned out to be a swan...
I'm sorry, but if you have to ask that question you really shouldn't be propounding your ideas about science as if they were facts.
The very notion of an idiotic universe makes a tingle go up my node.
We live in Ptolemaic times. Physicists and cosmologists claim to stand on the shoulders of giants, while in fact these pygmies have created a house of cards.
The late Dr. Thomas VanFlandern did a nice job of citing the top ten problems with the Big Bang Theory at http://www.metaresearch.org/cosmology/top10BBproblems.asp
There are also a host of problems with the idea of “black holes,” especially in terms of the unavoidable but inexplicable infinite quantities attached to calculations regarding the singularities that abut these (by definition) invisible objects.
If physics is to escape the trap created by internal power politics and academics’ requirement of conformity to conventional wisdom, radically new paradigms must be explored. And more ideas than just those embraced by the Electric Universe folks deserve consideration.
Thomas Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions provided the map for open ended investigations. It will require the serious consideration of heresies like those that Dewey Larson incorporated in his Reciprocal System, in which time and space are cast in radically new roles.
Finding an effective new standard model physics and cosmology will require open minds.
“With all of the problems here on Earth, it is amazing that we can spend so many public dollars on stuff like this. WHO THE HECK CARES?????”
Well, I do for one. But to answer your question more generally, many folks appreciate science in the abstract, as it represents the most tangible search for objective truth we have. It is without a doubt one of the most worthwhile human pursuits, and has had the nice side benefit of improving our technologies in a myriad ways.
Yes, even this type of research potentially has practical applications - dark energy and dark matter are completely new physics.
As the whole Universe is expanding faster than the speed of light (space not being matter, it can do that), any light inside the universe cannot escape the edge.
Therefore, the whole Universe is a Black Hole.
What is so special about a 2 billion LY one?
God, in the beginning created the heavens and the earth, and the earth BECAME without form and void. There is time between the two events. How much time? We don’t know and it doesn’t matter. He will tell us all about it someday, maybe soon.
Hear hear.
Well, I don’t understand any of this stuff but its in one of the 18 Enumerated Powers so... why not. It beats spending it on national health care...
I took this last night.
“why not. It beats spending it on national health care...”
We are in 100% agreement on that point! =:-)
Any idea how Emperor Ming the Merciless came by that much of a case of the ass against you??
I think inflation works well. What´s your take on creation?
Sort of a long story, but evolution has been totally disproved at this point and some version of intelligent design is basically in order.
And I like Divine Design better. But if you´d tear down a good theory, it only seems fair that you should posit another in it´s place.
That tripped me up too. I think they intend that gravitational lensing allows us us see what's behind the black hole, even thought there's no direct line of sight through to the other side.
MICROEVOLUTION is a proven fact of life and nobody argues over it. Microevolution means brown moths changing to white ones, finches with short beaks changing to finches with longer beaks, and that sort of thing.
MACROEVOLUTION is the notion that new KINDS of animals can somehow arise via an accumulation of the changes involved in microevolution and/or via mutations and this is the thing which is normally referred to as the theory of evolution.
There is no evidence supporting macroevolution at all. In fact when scientists tried to prove the concept in the early 1900s, they utterly failed and the failure was so stark and garish that a number of the scientists involved publically renounced evolution at the time, most notably Goldschmidt who devised his "hopeful monster" theory as a possible replacement.
What they did, over a period of about twenty years, involved fruit flies which breed new generations every few days. Twenty years worth of that is equal to tens of thousands of generations of any normal animal, i.e. enough for any possibility of macroevolution to be observed without requiring millions of years.
What they did was to subject those flies to everything in the world known to cause mutations, including electricity, chemicals, heat, cold, noise, silence, vibration, shock, blast, and basically just everything, and then recombine like mutants in every possible way.
And all they ever got was what the breeders told Charles Darwin was all he would ever get via mutation when they told him he was full of shit in the 1850s, i.e. fruit flies, sterile mutants, and next generations of mutants which returned, boomarang-like, to the norm for a fruit fly. Basically, all they had to show for their work after 20 years was fruit flies. No wasps, ants, spiders, mantises, beetles, hornets, mosquitos, or any other kind of animal whatsoever; just fruit flies.
When DNA and RNA were discovered in the 1960s, the reason for the failure of those experiments became known.
In other words, our entire living world is based on information and the only information there ever was in the picture for those experiments 100 years ago was the information for fruit flies.
Evolution should have been abandoned at that point as Cohen noted:
"At that moment, when the DNA/RNA system became understood, the debate between Evolutionists and Creationists should have come to a screeching halt
I.L. Cohen, Researcher and Mathematician
Member NY Academy of Sciences
Officer of the Archaeological Inst. of America
Darwin Was Wrong - A Study in Probabilities
New Research Publications, 1984, p. 4
Basically, the typical yuppie who believes in evolution does not really understand the meaning of "natural selection" and assumes it to be some sort of magical process which produces new kinds of animals. Natural selection in fact is a destructive process and not a constructive one. You could no more create a new species with natural selection than you could build a skyscraper with a wrecking ball. Natural selection is the conservative process which weeds out everything an iota to the left or right of dead center for the norm of a given animal species. It is an agent of stasis and not of change.
What the theory of evolution actually says is that chance mutations create new kinds of animals and that, amongst these new kinds of animals, natural selection then weeds out the "unfit".
The only problem is that, in real life, mutations all have names, such as "Down's Syndrome", "Tay-Sachs", "cri-du-chat syndrome", phoco-locii etc. etc. etc. Ever notice the women walking door to door collecting money for the Mothers' March of Dimes? Ever notice that they are ALWAYS collecting money for research to PREVENT mutations, and never for money for research to CAUSE them? Think there might be a reason for that??
Charles Darwin's theory demands that these kinds of mutations which are invariably destructive and detrimental, are the root cause of our entire biosphere, starting from one-celled animals. The whole idea is basically idiotic.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.