The Universe is a Giant Donut*

*Scott Adams

Astronomers have stumbled upon a tremendous hole in the universe. That's got them scratching their heads about what's just not there. The cosmic blank spot has no stray stars, no galaxies, no sucking black holes, not even mysterious dark matter. It is 1 billion light years across of nothing. That's an expanse of nearly 6 billion trillion miles of emptiness, a University of Minnesota team announced Thursday.

Astronomers have known for many years that there are patches in the universe where nobody's home. In fact, one such place is practically a neighbor, a mere 2 million light years away. But what the Minnesota team discovered, using two different types of astronomical observations, is a void that's far bigger than scientists ever imagined.


...Holes in the universe probably occur when the gravity from areas with bigger mass pull matter from less dense areas, Tully said. After 13 billion years "they are losing out in the battle to where there are larger concentrations of matter," he said.

Retired NASA astronomer Steve Maran said of the discovery: "This is incredibly important for something where there is nothing to it."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/24/AR2007082400600.html

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

I could swear I've seen a theoretical donut diagram of the Universe, and it made more sense to me than the saddle diagram, but I couldn't tell you where. Seems a long time ago.

Good eye, though. That's pretty freakin' cool.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

I figure that people will come up with monikers for that bubble, my proposal is the "Cosmic Sahara".

Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

I always thought there was something fundamentally wrong with the universe - no jam filling.

 

mmmm donuts....

 

ooooooooooh!, I was gonna say that.


Perhaps it's a cosmic bald patch
in need of a comb-over.

 

Maybe it was the site of the Big Bang? Its the only logical reason I can think of. All the matter flying out of the Big Bang would logically have left a very big hole.

 

Wouldn't this area be similiar to the Dark Matter areas they have also located?

The composition of dark matter is unknown, but may include ordinary and heavy neutrinos, recently postulated elementary particles such as WIMPs and axions, astronomical bodies such as dwarf stars and planets (collectively called MACHOs), and clouds of nonluminous gas. Current evidence favors models in which the primary component of dark matter is new elementary particles, collectively called non-baryonic dark matter.

http://www.dogpile.com/info.dogpl/c...awto=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_matter

 

And Mrs. God leant over his shoulder when he'd finished and said "You've missed a bit".

 

Is matter (stars, gases, dust) flying into the void, or out of it? That wasn't explained in the article. If the former, perhaps it's the site of a galaxy-mass black hole; if the latter, perhaps the site of a hypernova (LOTS bigger than a supernova).

 

I wonder if then they dicussed and got divorced :bugeye:

 

Cosmic voids have been known for a long time (as the article states). It's the size of this one that's interesting. It's a little bit at odds with the idea of the (generally) homogeneous nature of the universe and begs an explanation under the current models.

For halo07guy, the BB was NOT an explosion IN space-time. It was a rapid expansion OF space-time. "Big Bang" was a derogatory name given to the theory by astronomer Fred Hoyle. It is a complete misnomer meant to ridicule the idea. Unfortunately, it stuck.

Spacetime is currently thought to be infinite, as it was at the BB. But the scale factors or metrics that describe spacetime were vastly smaller. Space itself is what's expanding. There is no "center".

 

If you are implying that this "void" is somehow seperate from the universe ("an empty spot somewhere inside the universe, that is surrounded by universe") then you are incorrect. The universe is all that there is. This is simply a large void in which the average density of matter is on the order of one atom per cubic meter. Pretty thin stuff.

Matter in the visible universe appears to be arranged in "filaments" that resemble a foam of sorts (the filaments are defined by the distribution of galaxy clusters). The spaces between the filaments are voids.

 

BTW, can we not recognize a silly Scott Adams quote when we see one and not be so literal?

 

Agreed.

 

"Bismarck" ?

What's the rough Italian bread that's like this - ciabatta? Voids, some large. Good stuff.

Topologically, IIRC a hollow sphere is identical to a solid sphere - product of a smooth deformation. Any closed curve can be contracted to a single point without discontinuity in the contraction.

 

"I meant to do that! Nag, Nag, Nag, Nag, Nag! Is that all you can do? Leave me alone, bitch!"

Yes. It is as we all feared. God is trailer trash. Why do you think he invented PBR and Nascar? He always sends tornadoes to trailer parks because he misses his drinking buddies.

 

For those who don't know what PBR is...

Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

It's the piss of drunk rednecks sold back to them in a can.