WASHINGTON (Reuters) -A giant hole in the Universe is devoid of galaxies, stars and even lacks dark matter, astronomers said on Thursday.
The team at the University of Minnesota said the void is nearly a billion light-years across and they have no idea why it is there.
“Not only has no one ever found a void this big, but we never even expected to find one this size,” said astronomy professor Lawrence Rudnick.
Writing in the Astrophysical Journal, Rudnick and colleagues Shea Brown and Liliya Williams said they were examining a cold spot using the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe satellite, and found the giant hole.
“We already knew there was something different about this spot in the sky,” Rudnick said. The region stood out as being colder in a survey of the Cosmic Microwave Background — the faint radio buzz left over from the Big Bang that gave birth to the Universe.
“What we’ve found is not normal, based on either observational studies or on computer simulations of the large-scale evolution of the Universe,” Williams said in a statement.
The astronomers said the region even appeared to lack dark matter, which cannot be seen directly but is usually detected by measuring gravitational forces.
The void is in a region of sky in the constellation Eridanus, southwest of Orion.
The researchers have posted images on the Internet at:
www.nrao.edu/pr/2007/coldspot/graphics.shtml.
Space is big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind- bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist’s, but that’s just peanuts to space.
Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
It was the center of a galactic war of epic scope. The war ended with assured mutual destruction…
Mantrid and his drone arms only just beginning, lol!
Hmmm I am reminded of a scifi story I read, at anyrate the gist of the story was that aliens had created this artifical world as part of a machine to create a pocket universe because they could not contine ue to live in an older universe where there was lesser energy.
So thats what happened I think, some kid has packed up his bricks (and nicked some of ours) and moved house.
Jason, it did start with patches in the sky! 😉
Lol! Technically it started in the episode “Mantrid” but the big revelation was in “Patches In The Sky” Maybe one day I’ll get get really high and while in someones dream shout “Its all over anyway Stanley, there’s patches in the sky!” If that hole expands someone needs to get Wayne Robson to repeat that line.
-Jayson
bet this is where the socks go that you lose in the dryer.
darcy
No, that wouldn’t be liekly otherwise it wouldn’t be a hole would it? No it would be a giant ball of evil hurtling towards earth.