Any doomsaying yet?

Here is it

__________________
Freedom For Fission A breath of fresh Iodine-131

No, but thats still cool though.

__________________
May the Schwartz be with you!

Give it some time.. someone will eventually think of some odd way that galaxies millons or billions of lightyears away that are lined up will kill us. :P

Itsd the deviding line between the universe...

"Take one step over this line and its war!"

That or a "X" for a giant game of tic-tac-toe

"Mom, the Virgo cluster is on my side!!"
"She started it!"

My first thought is how incredible our night skies might be if the Milky Way was a part of a galaxy chain like that. Secondly, I wonder if it would have affected how life was generated on Earth. Or if life would even be possible. I know the distances are still quite great, but I wonder none the less.

__________________
"Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known." Carl Sagan

The fact that all the galaxies appear to be reddened suggested that that line is an awful long way away.

__________________
"If lightspeed has something to do with speed.
how come things can move fast in the dark?"
-James Driscoll (Spaceman), kook, imbecile, idiot.

...that appear to be lined up. Since they are millions or billions of light years away, where they are in the sky now isn't where we see them.

True, but do you think the HBs will believe that? :wink:

Geez! What would this be? A type XXXVII Civilization?

Well, if the universe was created by a big bang, and space/time as we know it is expanding out in a spherical pattern, wouldn't it make sense for there to be a "shockwave" edge to the universe? You know, where you may have a few stars in front of the wave, most of the material in the universe in the wave itself, and then a more or less uniform distribution of stars behind the wave where they got left behind? Where the majority of the universe is still being blown out by the initial explosion?

__________________
But he that sows lies in the end shall not lack of a harvest, and soon he may rest from toil indeed while others reap and sow in his stead. -J.R.R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion

No, because before the Big Bang there was no space into which to expand. Spacetime itself was created along with matter, so, technically, the Big Bang happened simultaneously at all points in the universe. This is why we see more of a (relatively) uniform situation instead of a spherical shell.

I've read some theories that the universe is closed and curved in on itself, but I think the recent WMAP measurements pointed to a flat universe which was predicted by inflationary theory.

There is no edge, just as there is no center. As an analogy, think of the surface of the Earth. It has no center (on the surface) and no edge (no matter how far you go, you can't fall off).

__________________
Any day you wake up on "the right side of the dirt" is a good day.

T. Anderson

Sooooooo... if one were to ( in theory of course ) fly in what appears to them to be a stright line away from earth, would they eventually come back to it?

Come to think of it, close examinatino of the photo seems to reveal some sort of super large bowl right there in the middle of the field. This will probably kick off a new astronomical era. Too bad this wasn't first discovered by a New England observatory! :wink:

__________________
A person's name, or a mark representing it, as signed personally or by deputy, as in subscribing a letter or other document.

I downloaded the high definition image and scanned it using a high-pass Wratten yellow filter. I was really surprised, when looking at the cluster near the center, to find this particular pattern (inside the ellipse):



Really wouldn't be surprised if it were some sort of artifact of the telescope's optics. 8)

__________________
A person's name, or a mark representing it, as signed personally or by deputy, as in subscribing a letter or other document.

Cosmic string.
Definitely.

__________________
Orion's Arm . The Starlark . Voices: Future Tense- Novella Contest Issue! . OA Flickr set

So, Muskatov, are you saying that someone just took a deep scan of the Pleiades? 8)

:-s Muskatov????

__________________
Any day you wake up on "the right side of the dirt" is a good day.

T. Anderson

Whoops, I meant "Maksutov." Um, at least I didn't say "nebularian." 8-[ ops:

Hey, even "Mazeltov!" is fine by me if you're buying!

__________________
A person's name, or a mark representing it, as signed personally or by deputy, as in subscribing a letter or other document.