Great "Cosmic Nothingness" found

[Hill]

From:

BBC NEWS | News Front Page

 

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Great 'cosmic nothingness' found

 

Great 'cosmic nothingness' found

 

VLA (NRAO/AUI)

The result comes from a sky survey by the VLA in New Mexico

 

'It's hard to picture'

Astronomers have found an enormous void in space that measures nearly a billion light-years across.

 

It is empty of both normal matter - such as galaxies and stars - and the mysterious "dark matter" that cannot be seen directly with telescopes.

 

The "hole" is located in the direction of the Eridanus constellation and has been identified in data from a survey of the sky made at radio wavelengths.

 

The discovery will be reported in a paper in the Astrophysical Journal.

 

Previous sky surveys that have traced the large-scale structure of the nearby Universe have long shown, for example, how the clustering of galaxies is strung into vast filaments and sheets that are separated by great gaps.

 

But the void discovered by a University of Minnesota team is about 1,000 times the volume of what would be expected in typical cosmic gaps.

 

"It's hard even for astronomers to picture how big these things are," conceded Minnesota's Professor Lawrence Rudnick.

 

"If you were to travel at the speed of light, it would take you several years to get to the nearest stars in our own Milky Way galaxy; but if you were to go to this hole and enter one side, you'd have to travel for a billion years before you would get to the other side," he told BBC News.

 

The void is roughly 6-10 billion light-years away and takes a sizeable chunk out of the visible Universe in its direction.

 

The team used data from the US National Radio Astronomy Observatory's VLA Sky Survey (NVSS) to make its discovery. The VLA - which stands for Very Large Array - is a collection of 27 radio telescopes in New Mexico.

 

The finding is said to fit neatly with observations of the Universe's "oldest light" - the famous Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) radiation, the study of which has earned several scientists the Nobel Prize.

 

This is the radiation that comes from just 380,000 years after the Big Bang when the Universe had cooled to such a degree that hydrogen atoms could exist. Before that time, scientists say, the Universe would have been so hot that matter and light would have been "coupled" - the cosmos would have been opaque.

 

Today, this light shines at microwave wavelengths at a frigid -270C; and observations of the CMB made by Nasa's Wilkinson Microwave Anisotopy Probe show a particular "cold spot" in the direction of the newly identified void.

 

The explanation for this may lie in the enigmatic "dark energy" that scientists know so little about but which is said to be accelerating the expansion of the Universe.

 

Light particles passing through the void would be expected to lose a little more energy than those passing through space cluttered with matter - if dark energy is stretching the Universe apart at a faster and faster rate.

 

Scientists refer to this as the Integrated Sachs-Wolfe Effect and a corresponding "warm spot" in the CMB associated with an area of space dominated by a supercluster of galaxies was identified some years ago.

 

"In essence, this latest study gives us a very elegant demonstration of the existence of dark energy in a way which is very convincing," commented Professor Carlos Frenk, the director of the Institute for Computational Cosmology at Durham University, UK.

 

"We keep getting evidence for dark energy, this component of the Universe which is so dominant, and yet we still have only a tiny glimmer of what it could be."

 

The reason the void exists is not known. "That's going to be a challenge for people that work on the development of structure in the Universe. It's a very hot topic in the cosmology right now," said Professor Frenk.

 

Location of Eridanus from Google Earth Sky.

[Michaelangelica]

i heard this on the BBC news.

Quite amazing.

The astronomer was gob-smacked.

It was suggested there might be more caused by the universe expanding much quicker than first thought

 

The thing I find funny is they can't work out a name for it.

"Black Hole" is out; "nothingness" is pretty lame so too is "empty".

It will be interesting what nickname it gets.

[Tormod]

The Really Big Dimple?

[Tormod]

Or maybe the have actually found the hole in the cosmic donut.

 

 

After all, some theories do suggest that the universe has that shape. Although I don't think they meant that we could actually see the hole - we would be inside the tube...

[sanctus]

More on the surface of the donut I would say, the hole being impossible to see (at least directly)

[Tormod]

Ah yes, I guess that is a more correct interpretation.

[Pluto]

Hello All

 

What if there are roaming black holes, they could not detect them.

 

Reagrdless,,,,,,,,,,,,expected large voids between the super clusters and the possible huge void from our known universe.

 

As for the Big Bang it would be a mistake to add any asumption.

[Tormod]

What if there are roaming black holes, they could not detect them.

 

They would be easy to detect by the way they influence their surroundings.

 

Reagrdless,,,,,,,,,,,,expected large voids between the super clusters and the possible huge void from our known universe.

 

Agreed, this is not a shock but it is an interesting observation.

 

As for the Big Bang it would be a mistake to add any asumption.

 

Huh?

[ronthepon]

This is totally a wierd thing.

 

Just a little linkage:

 

http://hypography.com/forums/news-brief/12626-huge-hole-found-universe.html

 

and

 

SPACE.com -- Huge Hole Found in the Universe

 

From the above link,

 

Photons of the CMB gain a small amount of energy when they pass through normal regions of space with matter, the researchers explained. But when the CMB passes through a void, the photons lose energy, making the CMB from that part of the sky appear cooler.

Why, Pray?

[Hilton Ratcliffe]

Hi everyone,

 

The answer may be quite simple, although I can't claim to know what it is. For years astronomers considered the dark patches in the Milky Way were voids, but the work of Gerrit Veschuur (based on the earlier pioneering astrophotography of E.E. Barnard) revealed that it was in fact obscuring clouds of weakly radiating Inter Stellar Medium (IGM). Advances in instrument technology let us detect intergalactic molecular hydrogen (HII) for the first time and by the time I was half way through my astronomy career I realised that we really can't see very much of what's out there.

 

This void may not be a true void at all, just a place where low density cold matter blocks the view or at least diminishes radiation signal strength to below our current observational threshold. The size of the dark patch correllates with the size of the Sloan Great Wall (~>1GLY) so we may be looking at part of a super-super structure. More bad news for the Cosmological Principle I guess...

 

Regards

Hilton

[Pluto]

Hello Tomod

 

How can you have a black hole affecting its surround if nothing is around?

 

As for the Big Bang, people assume it to be correct and than proceed to make assumptions.

[Michaelangelica]

I think we should call these empty spaces "BES"

(Big Empty Spaces)

I would have liked VVBES (Very, Very, Big Empty Spaces)

 

But I thinks" BES" has a nice Elizabethan ring to it.

 

Any advances on that?:shrug:

[Hill]

I think we should call these empty spaces "BES"

(Big Empty Spaces)

I would have liked VVBES (Very, Very, Big Empty Spaces)

 

But I thinks" BES" has a nice Elizabethan ring to it.

 

Any advances on that?:shrug:

 

How about WLoNGo??? Whole Lot o' Nuttin' Goin' on? :eek:

[kmarinas86]

More verification of the Cyclic Multiverse Hypothesis :shrug:

 

http://hypography.com/forums/astronomy-cosmology/9467-olbers-paradox-only-works-fields-constant.html

 

[Tormod]

How can you have a black hole affecting its surround if nothing is around?

 

A black hole influences space itself. Nothing that we know of can be inside the universe and not influence it, and as far as we know there is no "truly empty" space.

 

As for the Big Bang, people assume it to be correct and than proceed to make assumptions.

 

AFAIK you're the only one talking about the big bang in this case.

 

As for making assumptions, what else can we do when something great that we do not understand is discovered? :shrug:

[Tormod]

More bad news for the Cosmological Principle I guess...

 

Can you elaborate on why it would be so? I fail to see the connection. :shrug:

[Hilton Ratcliffe]

Good morning Tormod,

 

The Cosmological Principle states that at some or other "large scale" the Universe is homogeneous and isotropic, in other words, that it does not have large scale structure. It should be smooth and featureless in all directions. What are this void and and the CfA2 and Sloan great walls if not large scale anisotropy? The Cosmological Principle is scuppered by observation.

 

Regards

Hilton

"A damned nuisance, really."