Something is tugging at our universe!
Five years ago, I was reading an article in Scientific American (which I can no longer find), that was fascinating to me since I often contemplate the heavens and wonder what’s out there.
The article described a theory that black holes — which suck in all light and matter around them and collapse into a massively heavy pinpoint — actually got to a density that then caused an explosion “out the back”. The theory was that this explosion was a “big bang” that created a new universe, and the continued sucking in of light and matter from our universe continued to make that universe expand (similar to our own accelerating universe).
For many years I’ve been intrigued with Hugh Everett III‘s ridiculed concept of the many-worlds interpretation from which this theory of new universe creation sprang. His many-worlds theory claimed to resolve all the “paradoxes” of quantum theory since every possible outcome to every event defines or exists in its own “history” or “world.” In layman’s terms, this means that there is a very large, perhaps infinite, number of universes and that everything that could possibly happen in our universe (but doesn’t) does happen in some other universe(s).
A bunch of crap? Everett’s peers thought so and he was so ridiculed that he got his PhD, left physics, and became a defense analyst and consultant (and a multimillionaire so there’s money in being bullied!).
Now comes word he may have been on to something since a study has determined that there are Unknown “Structures” Tugging at Our Universe.
On the outskirts of creation, unknown, unseen “structures” are tugging on our universe like cosmic magnets, a controversial new study says.
Everything in the known universe is said to be racing toward the massive clumps of matter at more than 2 million miles (3.2 million kilometers) an houra movement the researchers have dubbed dark flow.
The presence of the extra-universal matter suggests that our universe is part of something biggera multiverse and that whatever is out there is very different from the universe we know, according to study leader Alexander Kashlinsky, an astrophysicist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland.
The theory could rewrite the laws of physics. Current models say the known, or visible, universe which extends as far as light could have traveled since the big bangis essentially the same as the rest of space-time (the three dimensions of space plus time).
The study group has just observed this phenomena and are drawing no definitive conclusions, but there is smoke they can see and are looking for the fire. This is why scientific exploration is so important and why I’m continually amazed that the more I learn, the less I know
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About Steve Borsch
Strategist. Learner. Idea Guy. Salesman. Connector of Dots. Friend. Husband & Dad. CEO. Janitor. More here.
Connecting the Dots Podcast
Podcasting hit the mainstream in July of 2005 when Apple added podcast show support within iTunes. I'd seen this coming so started podcasting in May of 2005 and kept going until August of 2007. Unfortunately was never 'discovered' by national broadcasters, but made a delightfully large number of connections with people all over the world because of these shows. Click here to view the archive of my podcast posts.
Never thought when I was trolling around figuring out where to find out about Minneapolis web development technology and startups I’d see something about my former field of astrophysics.
This stuff gets so complicated when it comes to Cosmology and these large scale forces. We still don’t understand dark matter well, much less this. I wonder what the Modified Newtonian Dynamics (MOND) theory of gravity predicts on cosmological scales in terms of this.
One thing I can say is that dark flow is probably the worst name possible for this phenomenon, because it indicates the flow is of dark matter when it is actually of all matter.