Rosie Odonnell pouncing on the last doughnut in the green room?

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Jami Cat
Astronomy is looking up... :)

Close. It's a volume with nothing to speak of, or as near as, inside it.

Nope. It takes an infinite amount of energy to get something with mass to the speed of light. Light, having no mass, travels only at the speed of light (in a vacuum). Hypothetical/theoretical particles called tachyons travel only faster than the speed of light, but so far they have not been detected.

All matter in the universe (as far as I know) is moving slower than the speed of light. In any frame of reference.

Fred

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"For shame, gentlemen, pack your evidence a little better against another time."
-- John Dryden, "The Vindication of The Duke of Guise" 1684

Well, if that is not a hole then what is?

Yes, as long as it doesn't carry any information.

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Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself. The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.
-- Richard Feynman

What do u mean

Yes, as long as it doesn't carry any information.

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Don't Hate Me Cause I Am Dum

^^^^^
I to am a little confused on that phrase.

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Sometimes I think we're alone. Sometimes I think we're not. In either case, the prospect is staggering!

Could it be the BB model is wrong? The early( ) universe was not homogeneous.

And again there is another model (which shall not be mentioned for fear of incurring the mods wrath) that can accommodate this finding with no contradictions.

I am surprised that the astronomers are surprised

Another nail for the BB coffin!

and here is the Part II of the article, which just came out this morning : http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap070827.html

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Universe's limits are our own limits ...

Yes, the suggestion that these 'holes'/Voids were sucking galaxies in, is way off the mark

http://www.eso.org/public/outreach/p.../pr-10-96.html

Here is an article that explains the Voids pretty well.

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RussT
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Everything is, as it should be, otherwise, it wouldn't be!

I didn't really realize that this part was in the quote that I posted for Cougar about the 'opposite' thingy, that I showed with KenG's aanswer for time being frozen at the event horizon.

For more on the photons reference frame discussion, see...

Einstein's Theory of Special Relativity

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RussT
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Everything is, as it should be, otherwise, it wouldn't be!

No. Or perhaps partially. Quantum fluctuations would have become (continuously) stretched and "blown up" during the (extremely brief) inflationary period, resulting in slight density variations. For the following 300,000 years, gravity wanted to start clumping mass around the regions with slightly higher density. But the extreme temperature wanted to keep everything in thermal equilibrium. The 300,000-year battle between these two "forces" caused waves in the "soup," and remarkably, the effect of these waves has been observed as the "acoustic peaks" of the CMB.

Rather than speaking of "nails in the coffin" of the big bang, it is the combination of all observations, including that of the acoustic peaks, that keep the big bang out of the mortuary and on the throne as the reigning Queen of Cosmology.

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Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.

Imagine walking past a light source. As you can see, a few meters away your shadow travels much faster than you. It is easy to imagine that at the distance of one light years your shadow travels at an incredible speed.

Let's say that there are two observers 1 ly from you and each other. From your point of view, both observes see your shadow almost the same time despite the distance between the observers. However, it takes one year before the observers become aware of each other's situation. Therefore, although the shadow moved almost instantly between the observers no information was passed.

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Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself. The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.
-- Richard Feynman

A better term for it would be "bubble".

Only after they slow the photons down in a lab.

Well, at least you qualified your statement somewhat, Nowhere Man. I'm afraid many news and other sources are giving the impression that this huge void is completely empty. This is obviously a different picture than the authors of the finding are claiming, since their paper begins....

We detect a dip of 20-45% in the surface brightness and number counts of NVSS sources smoothed to a few degrees at the location of the WMAP cold spot.

This says, "We don't find as many objects in this region." It does NOT say, "We find no objects in this region."

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Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.

Aye to that, Cougar.

Fred

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"For shame, gentlemen, pack your evidence a little better against another time."
-- John Dryden, "The Vindication of The Duke of Guise" 1684

Has there been speculation toward a navel for our universe? Perhaps a birthmark; they are usually dark.

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Lighten up! This is a stellar board! Author: duh.

"The Sun, with all the planets revolving around it, and depending on it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as though it had nothing else in the universe to do..." Author: Galileo supposedly.

attached is a copy of the wmap cmb image that i've converted to greyscale (and darkened).

the "hole" is supposedly situated in eridanus...which i've marked on the image (somebody please correct me if i'm wrong about the position).

*************

Attached Images

wmapgrey2.gif (145.6 KB, 42 views)

madman,
An online article by Rudnick, Brown, and Williams included a picture of the wmap image with an arrow pointing to the cold spot, right where your picture indicates. For some reason, that article is no longer online, or, if it is, I can't find it.

thanks Fortunate.

[quote=Cougar;1056764]"The region of the spot shows no spectral dependence in the WMAP data. This is consistent with the CMB and inconsistent with the known spectral behavior of galactic emission (as well as the SZ effect)."

The problem is what is not known. For half a century it was assumed that our galaxy was transparent because it is dark in the visible light band. We know it is dark now, because it is dirty.

The assumption that there is information in the CMB about a primal moment is also based upon the assumption that the darkness we see at great distances is due to great changes in structure. The soft X-ray background is just being resolved, and appears rather like the extended local environment. How depthy is this familiar structure, and what, if anything passes through it?

http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/...706.3089v1.pdf

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jwj

It's ok not to know. We should try harder to find out.