Free Republic

It's been nearly a century since scientists first theorized that the Universe was expanding, and that the farther away a galaxy was from us, the faster it appears to recede. This isn't because galaxies are physically moving away from us, but rather because the Universe is full of gravitationally-bound objects, and the fabric of space that those objects reside in is expanding. But this picture, which held sway from the 1920s onward, has been recently revised. It's been only 20 years since we first realized that this expansion was speeding up, and that as time goes on, individual galaxies will...

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...

Just before cutting to break, 4:54AM Baghdad time, the MSNBC anchor called a crackling popping sound "small arms fire" in Baghdad. What was this? It was continuous for at least a minute. It was also on the net stream, but eventually died away. Anyone else hear this? I'm going to get "grilled" for this "pop-secret" vanity, but it was truly bizarro. Never heard anything like it. E-Bomb? Or snacking reporter? It sounds like it's back.