Giant Tunnel Found In Distant Galaxy

Post Chronicle ^ | 1.12.2006

[VOA]

you beat me to it...
hopefully it won't be used to flood our local solar system with a
bunch of refugee telephone sanitizers.

[GreenHornet]

Something which is nearly 110,000 light years in length is more likely to be a natural feature rather than something created by intelligent critters, however talented they might be.

Then how do you explain the toll booth at the entrance?

[oh8eleven]

albore explaining how he invented a giant Milky Way-sized tunnel

[RightWingAtheist]

That's a great idea! I'm also reminded of Gregory Benford's Galactic Center series, which are set in such an environment. As a physicist, Benford has spent much of his career studying such jets, and duplicating their effects in the laboratory. I wonder if studying of the particles in this natural environment will help lead to new methods of accelerator design and experiments here on Earth.

[JRios1968]

Wouldn't it be funny if it were the Robert KKK Byrd Inter-Galactic Tunnel?

[Verginius Rufus]

If there are creatures stomping around the universe who are capable of constructing a tunnel 600 quadrillion miles long, I hope they're friendly. At any rate, they probably are not interested in the outcome of the Seahawks/Redskins game.

[JasonC]

Suppose you want to move your galaxy. It has a super massive black hole at its center like most or all galaxies.

If you feed it matter, it will convert something like 40% of that matter to pure energy. And shoot some of it out of the poles of the rotation of the infalling matter, at relativistic speeds. "Cap" one pole, in the sense of feeding interposing matter preferentially in front of one lobe of the jet, returning the energy so captured to the galaxy's matter circulation, and eventually back to the hole feed.

Then net recoil from the escape of the other lobe will move your galaxy. Presto, it's a spaceship. The whole civilization moves.