Wednesday, October 8, 2008

*What* did they say?

It was just a little news blurb in the serious and almost-always accurate New Scientist magazine: From issue 2675, 24 September 2008, page 7

But it made my jaw drop.

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The motion of distant galaxy clusters suggests they are being tugged on by matter from outside the observable universe, according to Alexander Kashlinsky at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and colleagues. The results will appear in Astrophysical Journal Letters.

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There have been hints for years that there's more to the universe than we can detect--- other dimensions, other "branes" and such--- but this might be the first measurable evidence.

Incredible!

5 comments:

  1. From Dark Matter to Dark Energy to this, somehow wouldn't a simpler explanation be that the mass of or distance to these galaxies be WRONG?

    Of course, I'm not a cosmologist...

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  2. "...worlds without end."

    I guess some people thought He was kidding.

    Long ago, someone stated that life on earth no more evolved than a discovered gold pocket watch in a farmer's field had evolved. I would update that a little, changing the watch to a mp3 player.

    People who know enough science, know that the fragility and specificity of living beings on earth and exact earth conditions provide little room for an human evolution theory. However, a case can be made for devolution through a perusal of Congress.

    I grew up with a wide range of Nobel prize winners in the sciences coming to dinner. I found that generally, the smarter and more knowledgeable a person was, the more solid was their belief in Deity. They also had a really good sense of humor.

    Wish I had been older and listened more carefully.

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  3. @goldenbear

    Nobel prize winners at dinner!!

    What an amazing childhood you must have had. Please drop a few names. It won't be considered snobbish, since I've asked.

    Thank you.

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  4. Randy: Yes, there is a movement afoot called MOND, or MOdified Newtonian Dynamics, which is attempting to take a completely different approach to explaining some otherwise hard-to-explain processes. For example, MOND attempts to do away with the need to invoke Dark Matter. MOND is a minority view now, but it's an interesting alternative to the increasingly baroque world of mainstream astrophysics.

    More on MOND:
    http://tinyurl.com/3oyxoh

    ReplyDelete