Huge Hole Found in the Universe

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Everything I need to know I learned through Googling.

Huh? I thought the "hot and cold" variations in the CMB were due to the density fluctuations on the surface of last scattering, NOT due to the existence or lack of matter BETWEEN that surface and our vantage point on Earth!

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

I suppose this is where all my odd socks have been going ...

so basically this thing is sucking up galaxys and growing, this aint good...

There is a "remarkable drop in the number of galaxies" in a region of sky in the constellation Eridanus, Rudnick said.

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Don't Hate Me Cause I Am Dum

For all we know, it is at least as likely that either:
1. It has excess dark energy and is pushing galaxies away, or
2. It has always been a hole.

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Forming opinions as we speak

huh

but if it is sucking up galaxys arent we gonna be part of that

I mean if it is devouoring things we can be gone before we even know it know.

6 to 10 billions light years how far is that in laymen terms to us, how long would it take to reach our galaxy

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Don't Hate Me Cause I Am Dum

It's the distance light travels in 6 to 10 billion years, at about 6 trillion miles per year.

Stop worrying about it. The sun will be long dead before it gets to "us," if it is moving toward us at all.

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

I dont understand that nowhereman, can you please explain how to calculate that

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Don't Hate Me Cause I Am Dum

We know from large spectroscopic and photometric surveys that the large scale structure of the universe is filamentry and spiderweb - like. In between the filaments, clusters, suoerclusters etc there are voids, which are generally ~<50Mpc in size. This seems to be anomalous because it is on the scale of Gpc, rather than tens of Mpc. How did it get this big?

Here is a proposed explanation of how the large void could cause a cool spot.
http://www.physorg.com/news107109720.html

About that hole in the universe - I didn't do it, nobody saw me and you can't prove anything.

If the result stands up, and the explanation in the physorg.com article also seems to stand up, maybe this could provide a quantitative test of the putative dark energy.

Can someone explain how this It's the distance light travels in 6 to 10 billion years, at about 6 trillion miles per year.
means longer than when the sun dies out. Isnt trillion more than billion

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Don't Hate Me Cause I Am Dum

Fortunate, I am not sure why this observation could be used to infer dark energy is real. But I suppose dark energy is the popular theory of the day.

See below for a description of the CMB anomaly. There are other explanations as to what could cause such a large anomaly besides dark energy. I thought explaining large structures was one of the unexplained cosmological mysteries.

Attached is a link to the preprint of the paper which I believed the physics org article refers to and a couple of excerpts.

“Extragalactic Radio Sources and the WMAP Cold spot” by Lawrence Rudnick, Shea Brown, Liliya Williams

http://arxiv.org/pdf/0704.0908.pdf


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sachs-Wolfe_effect

Now, if the galaxy-hog comes out of the hole-in-the-universe on February second, and sees its' shadow, ther'll be six more weeks of winter.
On the other hand if it's cloudy, and the shadow is faint, spring will be early.

......who needs Punxatawny Phil?

If the CMB is smooth to~ one part in ten million, indicating an isotropic and homogeneous fireball, how does a void ~ 1/15 of the universe form?

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A third rate theory forbids
A second rate theory explains after the fact
A first rate theory predicts...A. Lomonosov

I think you watch too much science fiction movies. The person doesn't mean that the number of galaxies is "dropping", but rather that the number falls when you get there, compared to other places. It doesn't mean that there were more last year, and that they've disappeared. We're not talking about the Bermuda triangle.

In any case, if galaxies were being "sucked into it" then there would be more galaxies there, not less.

So take a deep breath and relax.

And I can't help you with the calculations, but I can say, it's a looooong ways away.

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As above, so below

The interesting question for me about this is whether this has any bearing on the debate about the fractality of the universe. It is always assumed that the universe must be isotropic at large scales.

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As above, so below

I've got a feeling that the whole Universe is so large that somewhere it contains voids bigger than our visible universe.

Must be rough on the beings living next door to a super-void, thinking how odd their position, to be on the edge of the matter. That way, stuff. The other way, nothing.

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0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0....

Well, we ourselves are not quite on the very edge of anything, but in many ways we have a similar thing.

We live on the edge of the solid earth. On one side of us is solid earth, and on the other side the heavens above.

In the solar system, we are in a sense on an edge. On one side there is the bright sun, and on the other side darkness.

And in the Milky Way, we are kind of on the edge, so in some directions we see lots of stars but in others relatively few stars.

So I doubt that being on the edge of a super-void would make all that much of a difference. They would just notice that the night sky was a lot brighter on one side than the other.

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As above, so below

Aw man. I saw that news story and I came here thinking that I would be the first to post in BAUT... oh well.

But yeah, this is something weird. Obviously just based on random scattering of matter there will be some spaces which have less then others, but this is many orders of magnitude larger than would be predicted.

Perhaps one of the galaxies in the area is telling really bad jokes? Or is just really smelly?

Okay... there's that poor attempt at humor.

But this "hole" is so large that it will obviously take a lot of time for the light to travel from one side to the other. Is it somehow possible that there is not one single large hole? But rather.. that by the time the light from the far side travels to the near side that part is no longer empty...

Okay... I don't know how to explain what my under-rested 4:00 am brain is trying to say. I'll try later. (maybe somebody got it. I'm getting at the whole "time is a factor" thing and "there is no universal now")