As new information pours in, astronomers struggle to jam it all into their present cosmos which seems to be the idea that the universe is flying apart at the seams and all things are racing away from each other even though this is obviously being refuted by everything we are seeing except for red shift data which has to be re-examined, I believe, in light of the fact that all things seem to be falling in to each other, not away.
Explanation: This tiny ball provides evidence that the universe will expand forever. Measuring slightly over one tenth of a millimeter, the ball moves toward a smooth plate in response to energy fluctuations in the vacuum of empty space. The attraction is known as the Casimir Effect, named for its discoverer, who, 50 years ago, was trying to understand why fluids like mayonnaise move so slowly. Today, evidence is accumulating that most of the energy density in the universe is in an unknown form dubbed dark energy. The form and genesis of dark energy is almost completely unknown, but postulated as related to vacuum fluctuations similar to the Casimir Effect but generated somehow by space itself. This vast and mysterious dark energy appears to gravitationally repel all matter and hence will likely cause the universe to expand forever. Understanding vacuum fluctuations is on the forefront of research not only to better understand our universe but also for stopping micro-mechanical machine parts from sticking together.
This triumphant certification is belayed by a ton of contrary facts. In today's news is more troubling information that clearly shows, things are not flying apart but are clumping together more and more and everywhere we look, we see galaxies and all gases and matter and stuff and thingies all sliding into each other, relentlessly.
But astronomers will have to resolve discrepancies in the otherwise tight connection between ordinary matter and the dark "stuff".Concentrations of ordinary matter almost always overlap with concentrations of dark matter - but not absolutely always.
Conversely, the researchers saw that dark matter concentrations sometimes seemed to have no corresponding ordinary matter.
"It's not forbidden, but you get a little uncomfortable because you would think the two should go together," said Dr Linder.
Using the effects of 'lensing' which is the distortion of light by gravity, scientists have made a 3-D map of part of the universe. This shows clearly that dark matter is clumping around galaxy clusters and streams. As per usual, every piece of data showing the elements of all sorts clumping together is touted as justification for the present Cosmic Analysis that the universe is flying apart faster and faster.
I took a glass double dove sculpture and held it over the tile pattern on my kitchen floor and photographed it. The distortions of the 12"x12" grid behind the glass birds can be seen clearly in the body of the birds. Showing the distortions caused by gravity reveals the shape of time and space and to do this, you need to 'see' a grid behind it all: the cosmic reality. Namely, space is warped by objects but we can't see it because it is invisible. Just like we can't see currents in the air unless there is clouds or birds riding thermals. And hot air shimmers and distorts the view of the horizon or even nearby objects thanks to the molecules in our atmosphere.
We can see the atmosphere of Jupiter and the other gas giants because it is very dense and colorful. The density of atmospheric gases distort the view in Venus so greatly, everything probes photographed before disintegrating showed a strange landscape, warped and woofed in all directions. When we look at the giant conglomerations of galaxies, we can clearly see how badly our own view is warped by distortions caused by tremendous gravity and incidentally, the tremendous heat generated by these massive conglomerations distorts, too.
Carlos Frenk commented: "Finding what I would call 'naked' clumps of dark matter where there are no galaxies for me is very strange. All dark matter clumps of sufficient size should have galaxies - if our understanding is correct."For the moment, no-one is talking about needing to revise cosmological models; but Professor Frenk said everything hinged on the size of these anomalies.
"What would be an enormous puzzle would be to find big, luminous galaxies sitting out there in the middle of nowhere with no dark matter around them. That really would be shocking."
What if the fabric of space is folded? Astronomers have thought of this and science fiction writers have happily seized this notion to enable cross-galactic flights of fancy. When the Big Bang blew up, all sorts of stuff exploded with it. And the force of this explosion was very great. But a general rule of nature seems to be, if things are flying away from each other very fast, they all like to end up clumping together again somehow, this is why free radicals join whoever has a spare slot available in their atomic structure.
Nature doesn't like anarchists any more than governments on earth.
Our universe would have cooled down really fast if everything in the Big Bang petered out by flying away from each other as fast as possible. If, like some fantasies, everything not only flew apart but went faster and faster, why everything would now be dark as night, no? Nothing left. Yet everywhere we look, we see luminosity in big clumps. The greater our perspective, the more they clump!
Indeed, looking into the deep past, we see this clearly only because we can see enough space to see this clumping at work. Namely, when we look at our nearest neighbors within our own clump, we see them as if they are very far apart from each other.
This is due to our perspective: like a photographer taking pictures of a mountain range, he or she can see the shape of mountains in the distance but not the one where he or she stands! Or another way of looking at this: if one stands on a mountain peak, one can see all around but not underfoot.
You can bet, if we see galactic clusters in the far past, we are in one ourselves, right now. This should be an iron rule: all galaxies are trapped in clumps. But more: none of these clumps are circular, they are all in the equivalent of a stream, they flow directionally. Any galaxies on the sides slide down into these streams. I would suggest we are seeing folds in the space/time continuum.
&hearts The difference between big globular clusters and small ones puzzle astronomers.
To the unaided eye this glorious globular cluster has the appearance of a hazy star and was frequently confused with Halley's comet when it drifted through Centaurus in 1986. One of the richest in the Milky Way, Omega Cen contains several million stars, but unlike its southern rival, 47 Tucanae, it has a relatively open structure. Like most galactic globular clusters, the stellar population of Omega Cen identifies it as one of the oldest objects associated with the Milky Way, indeed its age is comparable to that of the Universe itself. The cluster contains a large number of RR Lyrae variable stars which enable its distance to be determined as 17,000 light years.
OK, first we have to clear up one thing: if this globular structure, 47 Tucanae, is as old as the universe, this means it formed soon after the Big Bang. And according to present beliefs, it should be shooting outwards to infinity because it should be drawn towards something that is making the universe fly apart!
Only it isn't. This poor star cluster, probably like the one our own sun formed within billions of years ago, has been sucked into the embrace of the Milky Way's resident black hole complex. And in they fall! For 13 billion years, this star group, 47 Tucanae, has managed to avoid all other stellar objects, truly flying off on its lonesome, but probably for the last 2 to 3 billion years, its happy journey outwards curved inwards as the indentation in the space/time fabric caused by our own galaxy, worked to draw these happy-go-lucky stars into a future of being torn asunder and jammed into the vicinity of other captive stars and ground to dust by the churning galaxy itself.
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0612/ngc1097_gabany_f.jpg
&hearts Here is a photograph of a distant mountain range which clearly shows how all galaxies are sucking down all small globular clusters.
A smaller companion seems wrapped in the spiral arms of enigmatic galaxy NGC 1097. This amazingly deep image of the peculiar spiral system, also known as Arp 77, actually combines data from two telescopes, one in the northern and one in the southern hemisphere of planet Earth. The faint details revealed include hints of a mysterious jet emerging toward the top of the view. Seen to be about 42,000 light-years from the larger galaxy's center, the companion galaxy is gravitationally interacting with the spiral and will ultimately merge with it. NGC 1097's center also harbors a massive black hole. NGC 1097 is located about 45 million light-years away in the chemical constellation Fornax.
'Gravitationally interacting' is cute. It makes it sound like equals meeting. Of course, words make pictures in the head and the astronomers who write for APOD know their audience needs to picture things in their heads so why don't they write, 'The much bigger galaxy is in the process of trapping and sucking into its gaping maw, the smaller star cluster.' After all, the image that creates is accurate!
When two galaxies are engaged in coalescing, this is a messy business which lights up the universe as the attending clouds of gases, raw materials, rocks, dirt or whatever enfold each other and as they get crushed and packed in denser and denser, light blazes forth for these create quite a fireworks show. In the old days, astronomers called galaxies engaged in this violent pas-de-deux were called 'active' galaxies. And ones that were simply deforming space and time and waiting for the next customer to stray nearby, were considered to be 'complete' or 'dormant'.
Picturing these things differently means changing one's cosmology. And this is most difficult. The idea that all things are falling into each other is violently at odds with the idea that things are moving away. The idea that the things we see moving away are doing so because they are the only things we really can see since all we see is the past when we photograph the cosmos, we are like passengers on a ship photographing the distant shore but unable to see the iceberg looming ahead since we are sitting in the back of the Titanic and not the front.
What has astonished the scientists is how quickly the black hole was found."We were preparing for a long, systematic search of thousands of globular clusters with the hope of finding just one black hole," said Dr Maccarone. "But bingo, we found one as soon as we started the search. It was only the second globular cluster we looked at."
The black hole is located in a globular cluster associated with a galaxy named NGC 4472, some 55 million light-years away.
Globular clusters are among the oldest structures in the Universe. They contain thousands to millions of stars packed into a region of space just a few tens of light-years across.
These high densities should lead to frequent interactions and even collisions; and some models have suggested that large black holes - several hundred times the mass of our Sun - could develop in the densest inner regions of clusters.
Other simulations, however, predict that such gravitational interplay would probably eject most or all of the black holes that form in such an environment.
Astronomers have to start out with assumptions and as data pours in, they have to then adjust these assumptions. So it is here: globular clusters have black holes. If, when looking, the very first ones show this, then one has to suspect the clusters without black holes are unusual or are something else and should have another name.
The greatest gravitators, the biggest beasts in the universe are the giant globular clusters like&hearts M 87, aka, the Great Attractor:
A certain skittishness is understandable. This is why my parents adamantly refused to talk about ultimate cosmology with me at any time, they could contemplate all sorts of things but not this sector of our universe being folded into a massive object and destroyed. The unsettling psychology of this is probably why astronomers are clinging to the 'flying apart as fast as possible' mythology.
Indeed, all our religions are attempts at controlling the inclinations of Nature and avoiding death. We really want eternity. It is our lodestar. To exist forever and ever. Our little star cluster could have sailed on for eons if it hadn't been trapped by the Milky Way! And of course, the idea of this entrapment is very scary---I would suggest, we are entirely unable to appreciate this!
&hearts And here is another illustration of the adege, 'The more we know, the less we understand.'
The results largely matched energy fluctuations seen in Earth-bound fluid turbulence, making this the first "definitive" detection of space turbulence, said Melvyn Goldstein of Goddard Space Flight Center. He has worked on previous studies that gave hints of the same similarity.That the solar wind behaves like the cream swirling in your coffee is surprising, since the low-density solar wind has almost no viscosity--an important component in fluid turbulence.
"For turbulence to develop in space, there must be some physical processes that can replace the role of viscosity," Narita says.
This viscosity replacement may be some complicated electromagnetic interaction between the solar wind's ionized particles. Goldstein says much of the current work is aimed at understanding how this plasma behaves in relation to the nearby magnetic fields.
Better characterization of solar wind turbulence could help scientists predict space weather, which affects the radiation level for astronauts and spacecraft, Narita says.
As we develop tools and equipment that helps us 'see' things that are invisible to human eyes, we are amazed by the complexity and dynamics of what appears to be empty space to the naked eye. Many years ago, I explained to audiences at Science Fiction Conventions, we can never travel at the speed of light or even a great fraction of it simply because space is too crowded with stuff. Comets approaching the sun disintegrate, for example.
Our space craft move at a dottering pace which is why they don't tear themselves apart. If one moves slowly enough, there is little danger. But this means trips to even nearby planets takes years. So far, I see no possible way around this reality.
One thing seems pretty certain: all energy systems create turbulence. And the bigger the system, the more they create turbulence and there seems to be plenty of material to turbo up. Just 30 years ago, astronomers still thought space was pretty empty (despite me saying otherwise, heh). Today, they can plainly see, it isn't and understanding the complexity of all this is a wonderful business and I hope some astronomers kick away the present word-picture paintings so painfully drawn and try new, different words to describe all this and then maybe we can understand our fates, our future.
What fun!
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