Unknown "Structures" Tugging at Universe, Study Says

[Jon]

Unknown "Structures" Tugging at Universe, Study Says

Something may be out there. Way out there.

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 hour—a movement the researchers have dubbed dark flow.

The presence of the extra-universal matter suggests that our universe is part of something bigger—a 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 bang—is essentially the same as the rest of space-time (the three dimensions of space plus time).

Picturing Dark Flow

Dark flow was named in a nod to dark energy and dark matter—two other unexplained astrophysical phenomena.

The newfound flow cannot be explained by, and is not directly related to, the expansion of the universe, though the researchers believe the two types of movement are happening at the same time.

In an attempt to simplify the mind-bending concept, Kashlinsky says to picture yourself floating in the middle of a vast ocean. As far as the eye can see, the ocean is smooth and the same in every direction, just as most astronomers believe the universe is. You would think that beyond the horizon, therefore, nothing is different.

"But then you discover a faint but coherent flow in your ocean," Kashlinsky said. "You would deduce that the entire cosmos is not exactly like what you can see within your own horizon."

There must be an out-of-sight mountain river or ravine pushing or pulling the water. Or in the cosmological case, Kashlinsky speculates that "this motion is caused by structures well beyond the current cosmological horizon, which is more than 14 billion light-years away."

"We Found a Great Surprise"

More Here:

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news ... -flow.html

Later in the article there are of course counter-points from other scientists doubting the validity of this study, but if this 'dark flow' is real, what could be causing it?

[Singular Intellect]

Later in the article there are of course counter-points from other scientists doubting the validity of this study, but if this 'dark flow' is real, what could be causing it?

Ten bucks says no one will be able to guess what fundies will say.

[VT-16]

"Satan's on one side, God is on the other! They are pulling us apart, choose now before it's too late and we all get ripped in half!"

[Fleet Admiral JD]

<<Snicker>> Dark flow. . .

Funny that we were just discussing our accelerating universe in my science class yesterday. This would be an interesting notion if it turns out true.

[Zablorg]

The frustrating thing about this phenomenon is that it's likely it won't be possible to reasearch further, barring FTL or something...
Spoiler

I just had an idea. What if our universe was surrounded on all "sides" by other universes, each with their own clusters. Might it be possible, then, for the expansion of the universe to be caused by the pulling effect of all the universe-clusters surrounding us?

[FireNexus]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but this seems like it's simply a consequence of something gigantically huge being just out of sight. I can't understand the need to assign all kinds of weirdness to it.

[Admiral Valdemar]

So the Great Attractor has a brother, it seems.

[Lancer]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but this seems like it's simply a consequence of something gigantically huge being just out of sight. I can't understand the need to assign all kinds of weirdness to it.

Under our current knowledge of physics, something "just out of sight" of our universe can't possibly have originated from within our space-time, which means that either we've been fundamentally wrong about the nature of our universe, or that there exist structures with an origin other than our Big Bang. Either way, if the study is right, then we're talking about huge changes in our understanding of astrophysics (and cosmology in particular). That is definitely cause to assign "all kinds of weirdness."

[FireNexus]

But isn't it accepted that there are things which are outside of the known universe but still in the universe? Basically the part of the universe we can see is only a portion of it, due to relativistic limits.

[Count Chocula]

From dictionary.com:

Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1) - Cite This Source - Share This
u⋅ni⋅verse   /ˈyunəˌvɜrs/ Show Spelled Pronunciation [yoo-nuh-vurs] Show IPA Pronunciation

–noun 1. the totality of known or supposed objects and phenomena throughout space; the cosmos; macrocosm.

From the article posted (emphasis added):

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 hour—a movement the researchers have dubbed dark flow.

The presence of the extra-universal matter suggests that our universe is part of something bigger—a 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.

Maybe it's just me, but I smell a grant funding request here. Or maybe the article is poorly written. The article jumps from the Neuromancer - sounding "Dark Flow" to "extra-universal matter." WTF is "Dark Flow?" WTF is "extra-universal matter?" That makes no sense at all. If there's something so massive that the rest of the known universe is racing towards it at 555 miles per second, it stands to logic that the rest of the universe would be massively distorted towards this other point of the universe. That is not what astronomers observe.

This also seems to be a speculative theory based on observations from another speculative theory: ""cosmic microwave background radiation over the full sky"—radiation thought to have been released about 380,000 years after the birth of the universe." (from the NatGeo article). This sounds more bizarre than the "Dark Matter" theory, but hey, "Dark Matter" theory has funded a lot of research grants, so I guess putting "Dark" in a new theory might get some $$$.

Now that I think about the phrase "Dark Matter" again, it sounds a lot like Montezuma's Revenge.

[Junghalli]

Under our current knowledge of physics, something "just out of sight" of our universe can't possibly have originated from within our space-time, which means that either we've been fundamentally wrong about the nature of our universe, or that there exist structures with an origin other than our Big Bang.

Are you sure about this? Most sources I've read seem to think the observable universe is not the whole universe, if you're right the observable universe would have to be the entire span of the universe because it is bounded by the age of the universe and Earth's c horizon.

[Darth Ruinus]

Why can't this be explained with our current idea about the universe's expansion, without resorting to "extra-universal matter"?

[Count Chocula]

Maybe the astronomer who prepared this really likes Trek.

[starslayer]

This also seems to be a speculative theory based on observations from another speculative theory: ""cosmic microwave background radiation over the full sky"—radiation thought to have been released about 380,000 years after the birth of the universe." (from the NatGeo article). This sounds more bizarre than the "Dark Matter" theory, but hey, "Dark Matter" theory has funded a lot of research grants, so I guess putting "Dark" in a new theory might get some $$$.

If the CMB were a crackpot study, most astronomers (and me, as an astronomy student) would be out of a job right now. The CMB is a vital piece of evidence for the Big Bang theory, and is quite real and established (it was first discovered in the 60's by Penzias and Wilson, fully mapped in the 90's by COBE, and mapped even better just recently by WMAP). It originates from the time when the universe cooled enough that stable atoms could form (not nuclei; they formed in the first few seconds). Once this happened, photons could not be absorbed or scattered nearly so readily, and they went off across the now transparent universe; the technical term is that photons and matter "decoupled."

And dark matter is not a theory; it too is quite real. The impetus for introducing it arises from the rotation curves of galaxies. A brief explanation:

An orbiting object orbits more slowly the further away it is. This happens whether the object is a planet going around the Sun or a star going around a galactic center. What was found in the 70's upon analyzing the orbital speeds of stars in other galaxies was that the outer stars were going much too fast around the center for the visible mass (stars, dust, the central black hole) to be all the galaxy's mass; something else was present that, for whatever reason, did not reflect light. Hence the name "dark matter," as it does not interact electromagnetically, but does so only gravitationally to our knowledge. Further analysis has been able to create maps of where dark matter is present around galaxies and galaxy clusters to account for various effects like observed gravitational lensing and the aforementioned rotation curves. There is no way in hell that dark matter is a crackpot idea, and neither is dark energy, even if we don't know what their constituents are yet.

Under our current knowledge of physics, something "just out of sight" of our universe can't possibly have originated from within our space-time, which means that either we've been fundamentally wrong about the nature of our universe, or that there exist structures with an origin other than our Big Bang. Either way, if the study is right, then we're talking about huge changes in our understanding of astrophysics (and cosmology in particular). That is definitely cause to assign "all kinds of weirdness."

Uh, what? FireNexus is correct; something in our absolute elsewhere can affect something inside our light cone; it just can't affect us. The universe expands so fast that the observable portion of it is but one small backwoods bit; light simply hasn't had time to travel from one side of the full universe to the other, and it will never be able to. If something were just outside our observable universe (and at this point, it will pretty much be forever outside of it), but "right next" to something at the OU's edge, it would easily be able to affect said thing, even though it could never exchange photons with us.

Wrt the OP, I have no idea what could be causing this if it's real, nor does anyone, really. I'll see if I can ask some of my professors about it, and post what they have to say.

[Count Chocula]

Starslayer, thanks for the info. It was my understanding that CMB, and the Big Bang theory, were the best theories going but still remained to be proven. Hence, my comment about building a speculation on a speculation. 'Course, I only had one semester of Astro and the occasional article's worth of education, so my knowledge is incomplete.

Perhaps my problem with this article lies in the statements used by the astronomer, and the apparent ignorance of physics (took that stuff for one whole year!) it evinces. To wit: how the heck can "extra-universal matter" affect this universe? If I understand string theory and math theories correctly, the postulations of alternate universes, up to 18 IIRC, do not include them influencing THIS reality. I'm guessing the guy knew what he was describing, but was making it sound more grandiose to further impress the non-scientific minded.

It would have made more sense if he had said, "there's something out beyond our observable universe that seems to be pulling everything we can observe towards it. This raises difficult questions about many of our current theories about the size and age of the universe."

[Havok]

So is this article allowing for the possibility that there are multiple universes that occupy and even greater amount of space, like a mega-universe or as the article said, a multiverse that contains an unknown amount of universes, like our universe contains however many galaxies?

[Singular Intellect]

What I find somewhat perplexing and irritating is that the term 'universe' by definition is all that exists. Any observation, evidence or speculation of mass, additional dimensions, energy, etc should merely be a means of expanding the term 'universe' to include this additional information.

Defining the universe as anything and everything that exists while trying to postulate substance outside this definition is a non sequitur statement.

[starslayer]

Perhaps my problem with this article lies in the statements used by the astronomer, and the apparent ignorance of physics (took that stuff for one whole year!) it evinces. To wit: how the heck can "extra-universal matter" affect this universe? If I understand string theory and math theories correctly, the postulations of alternate universes, up to 18 IIRC, do not include them influencing THIS reality. I'm guessing the guy knew what he was describing, but was making it sound more grandiose to further impress the non-scientific minded.

Unfortunately, when scientists talk about our "universe," more often than not they mean our observable universe. As I said, the full universe is supposed to be much larger than the little bit of it we can ever see and interact with. That is probably the source of a lot of your confusion.

There are not "18 different universes" in string theory, either. I personally don't much like it because it hasn't generated testable predictions, and likely won't for decades; it doesn't help that its proponents seem to keep saying, "OMG greatest thing ever since sliced fucking bread!!1shift+1!" Anyways, string theory posits 11 (or 10; I don't remember) total dimensions (or 26; depends on who you listen to, as the math works out with only those two numbers so far), not universes. Beyond our four macroscopic dimensions (three space, one time), if string theory is correct, there are additional dimensions (including at least one of time!) that are microscopic and "curled up" so that they don't really affect us much even though they're there. I'm probably butchering this, too, as I can only get into explanations meant for laymen right now; the formal treatment won't be accessible until grad school (at least!).

It would have made more sense if he had said, "there's something out beyond our observable universe that seems to be pulling everything we can observe towards it. This raises difficult questions about many of our current theories about the size and age of the universe."

Yes, yes it would have. Unfortunately, laymen aren't impressed by this. They are impressed with stuff like the TV shows done by Brian Greene (I don't despise him by any means, but he is the most public supporter of string theory), which they then go on to wildly misinterpret. This is an entirely separate topic/rant.

So is this article allowing for the possibility that there are multiple universes that occupy and even greater amount of space, like a mega-universe or as the article said, a multiverse that contains an unknown amount of universes, like our universe contains however many galaxies?

It seems to be implying so, yes. A couple of professors at UCSC are studying this possibility (most notably this guy).

What I find somewhat perplexing and irritating is that the term 'universe' by definition is all that exists. Any observation, evidence or speculation of mass, additional dimensions, energy, etc should merely be a means of expanding the term 'universe' to include this additional information.

Defining the universe as anything and everything that exists while trying to postulate substance outside this definition is a non sequitur statement.

See what I said about "universe" versus "observable universe." In addition, the multiverse idea does not use the definition that the universe is all that exists; rather, it says that all we can detect, or suppose/establish is within our spacetime (not necessarily within our light cone), constitutes the universe.

[hongi]

Starslayer, thanks for the info. It was my understanding that CMB, and the Big Bang theory, were the best theories going but still remained to be proven. Hence, my comment about building a speculation on a speculation.

No theory can be proven beyond all doubt, but they sure as can be supported with enough evidence to put it reasonable doubt.

It was a while back, but cosmologists observed dark matter or to be more accurate, the effects of dark matter in the Bullet Cluster. No one really knows what dark matter is, but I'd be very surprised if we just imagined the whole thing.

[Johonebesus]

What I find somewhat perplexing and irritating is that the term 'universe' by definition is all that exists. Any observation, evidence or speculation of mass, additional dimensions, energy, etc should merely be a means of expanding the term 'universe' to include this additional information.

Defining the universe as anything and everything that exists while trying to postulate substance outside this definition is a non sequitur statement.

You're being pedantic. For simplicity's sake "universe" has long been used to mean everything that came from the Big Bang. It was once assumed that this was all that exists, but some physicists have postulated that there might be things or stuff that exist outside of the consequence of the Big Bang. Until now, if there is anything outside of the consequence of the Big Bang, it was assumed that there would be little or no way to observe or interact with it. It was assumed that we exist in a closed system. Anything beyond this system exists in different ways (with different dimensions and physical laws), so it might as well not exist to us.

With the evolution of the understanding of the cosmos, it has been useful to retain a single word to refer to the result of the Big Bang, even as scientists have seen hints that there might be more out there. It would be easier to slightly modify the technical meaning of the word and retain its common connotation than to come up with a new name for the result of the Big Bang.

Now if it turns out that all our familiar dimensions and physical laws extend beyond the result of the Big Bang and were therefore not created by the Big Bang, then it would be more reasonable to say that the Universe is much bigger than we thought and contains more space and matter than we imagined.

[Lancer]

Under our current knowledge of physics, something "just out of sight" of our universe can't possibly have originated from within our space-time, which means that either we've been fundamentally wrong about the nature of our universe, or that there exist structures with an origin other than our Big Bang. Either way, if the study is right, then we're talking about huge changes in our understanding of astrophysics (and cosmology in particular). That is definitely cause to assign "all kinds of weirdness."

Uh, what? FireNexus is correct; something in our absolute elsewhere can affect something inside our light cone; it just can't affect us. The universe expands so fast that the observable portion of it is but one small backwoods bit; light simply hasn't had time to travel from one side of the full universe to the other, and it will never be able to. If something were just outside our observable universe (and at this point, it will pretty much be forever outside of it), but "right next" to something at the OU's edge, it would easily be able to affect said thing, even though it could never exchange photons with us.

Wrt the OP, I have no idea what could be causing this if it's real, nor does anyone, really. I'll see if I can ask some of my professors about it, and post what they have to say.

The article quoted in the OP implied a massive structure out of sight of the visible universe period, not just the observable universe with respect to Earth. In any event, it would have to be quite massive and distant in order to have such an uniform and noticable effect on the entire known universe.

[Patrick Degan]

So, basically, we're back to this:

[Admiral Valdemar]

So... Jack Sparrow is outside the universe?

[The Duchess of Zeon]

If the ship just falls off the edge of the world and keeps falling forever, couldn't the sailors just live normal lives inside the hull until they die?

[Count Chocula]

Nothing is ever normal when Jack Sparrow's involved!