Science news doesn't get enough coverage...
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/070823_huge_hole.html
This is from August; I only just found out about it tonight thanks to tenketsu's generally diligent nature (amazing what you'll find by reading webcomics). It really is sad to me that if a celebrity goes to a bar, you can find out about it the very next day, and yet if something major like this is discovered, no one seems to care. And make no mistake about it; this is big.
One of the basic premises of our understanding of the universe is that the universe is isotropic and homogeneous; if you "scoop up" any random chunk above a certain size, it should always be the same regardless of where you got it from, so that basically the universe is identical in every direction and location. While I've always appreciated how logical the idea of a homogeneous universe is (after all, most physical forces are symmetric within an isolated system, and the universe is, as far as we can tell, an isolated system), I've also always hated how universally the idea seems to be accepted, considering how much of an assumption it is given how little we truly know about the fine structure of the universe (or even the gross structure of it, what with all the theories we're having to come up with to explain its large-scale behavior), so I'm not all that sad to see something come along and burst this convenient little bubble, but I am highly confused as to how something like this could've happened. I mean, it seems to violate the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics; an increasingly entropic system shouldn't have large empty spaces within it.
So is this evidence that our universe isn't an isolated system, or perhaps evidence of some kind of unusual force or pattern in the development of large systems, or (stretching on this one) maybe even evidence of interstellar travel (assuming the hole was formed, for example, by an intergalactic civilization who basically sucked raw material from the universe on a galactic scale, which would all but necessitate faster-than-light travel to make it worthwhile)? Whatever the case, so long as this hole's existence doesn't end up being proven false (and after having read the article, I'm not sure that's likely), it might not be a stretch to say that cosmology as we know it has just had a huge hole ripped in it (I couldn't resist; damn you, puns!), and even if the world in general doesn't think that's worth knowing, that's worthwhile news to me.
This is from August; I only just found out about it tonight thanks to tenketsu's generally diligent nature (amazing what you'll find by reading webcomics). It really is sad to me that if a celebrity goes to a bar, you can find out about it the very next day, and yet if something major like this is discovered, no one seems to care. And make no mistake about it; this is big.
One of the basic premises of our understanding of the universe is that the universe is isotropic and homogeneous; if you "scoop up" any random chunk above a certain size, it should always be the same regardless of where you got it from, so that basically the universe is identical in every direction and location. While I've always appreciated how logical the idea of a homogeneous universe is (after all, most physical forces are symmetric within an isolated system, and the universe is, as far as we can tell, an isolated system), I've also always hated how universally the idea seems to be accepted, considering how much of an assumption it is given how little we truly know about the fine structure of the universe (or even the gross structure of it, what with all the theories we're having to come up with to explain its large-scale behavior), so I'm not all that sad to see something come along and burst this convenient little bubble, but I am highly confused as to how something like this could've happened. I mean, it seems to violate the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics; an increasingly entropic system shouldn't have large empty spaces within it.
So is this evidence that our universe isn't an isolated system, or perhaps evidence of some kind of unusual force or pattern in the development of large systems, or (stretching on this one) maybe even evidence of interstellar travel (assuming the hole was formed, for example, by an intergalactic civilization who basically sucked raw material from the universe on a galactic scale, which would all but necessitate faster-than-light travel to make it worthwhile)? Whatever the case, so long as this hole's existence doesn't end up being proven false (and after having read the article, I'm not sure that's likely), it might not be a stretch to say that cosmology as we know it has just had a huge hole ripped in it (I couldn't resist; damn you, puns!), and even if the world in general doesn't think that's worth knowing, that's worthwhile news to me.