For You Extraterrestrials

[baltoro]

You may find that this spectacular image JUST RELEASED from the Hubble Space Telescope makes you feel a little homesick,...
Hubble Captures Incredible New Panorama of Tarantula Nebula
...Located about 170,000 light-years away in the Large Magellanic Cloud,...

[jj2007]

Try to imagine that:

"The region is so huge that, if it were as close to us as the Orion Nebula (the nearest stellar nursery to Earth, about 1,300 light-years away), it would be the size of 60 full moons in the sky and glow so brightly that it could cast shadows on the ground."

... download the insanely large 20,323 x 16,259-pixel version :dazzled:

[dedndave]

... download the insanely large 20,323 x 16,259-pixel version

... let's see if we can load that from resource   :lol

Code Select Expand

        INVOKE  LoadBitmapFromResourceAndCrash,idUniverse

[oex]

makes you feel a little homesick,...

Thank you

[Vortex]

Very nice picture. Thanks baltoro.

[baltoro]

...Here's something that might interest DAVE: Has Our Galaxy's Dark Matter Gone Missing?
...Profound implications for DAVE's Intergalactic Chicken Theory,... :eek
...Dark Matter is like reincarnation,...it's out there,...but, we don't really know what it is,...

[dedndave]

i dunno
scientists that proposed dark matter/dark energy did so because of the red-shift of light coming from distant stars
well - maybe that red-shift is due to a warped space-time continuum, rather than acceleration of the stars
i.e., what we perceive as one thing may be another - gosh - that's never happened before   :red

[donkey]

Dark matter is simply a type of matter that we cannot yet measure since we haven't found a way to detect its presence as it does not reflect or emit any type of radiation we are capable of measuring. So, there must be a different type of radiation that is present in the universe that we don't know about and subsequently can't detect. Personally I think that it is simply normal matter/energy that exists for so short of a time that it is virtually undetectable. Zero Point Fluctuation energy (ZPE) is my guess as to the missing mass, energy constantly being created and destroyed at virtually zero time intervals could possibly add a large amount of mass (since energy and mass are equivalent) to the universe but not last long enough to be detected by normal means. The theoretical limit to the amount of ZPE in the universe is infinite, so even though the amounts are miniscule, when taken over a large area they can be significant and increase with distance ad-infinitum. This might explain why we see evidence of dark matter in distant galaxies and at the same time are unable to detect its effects in our own.

[FORTRANS]

Hi,

   If I remember correctly, ZPE was a consideration for explaining
Dark Energy, not Dark matter.  One of the arguments went
something like: ZPE would be constant throught space, like Dark
Energy.  But unlike Dark Matter which is unevenly distributed
(clumps around normal matter).  But an interesting thought,
how would you weigh virtual partical density?

Cheers,

Steve N.

[dedndave]

oh and, by the way.....
who knows how much matter is amassed inside black holes ? - lol
quite a lot, i would think
for our understanding, we are inside the black hole of someone else's universe

[FORTRANS]

oh and, by the way.....
who knows how much matter is amassed inside black holes ? - lol
quite a lot, i would think

Hi,

   Well, yes and no.  The black hole in the center of our galaxy
is on the order of millions of the Sun's mass.  The galaxy is of
the order of hundreds of billions of stars.  So, quite a lot by one
measure.  Not so much relative to what else is out there.  (Stars
should have less mass than the gas and dust wandering around.
{Not to mention all that Dark Matter.  <g>})

Regards,

Steve N.

[dedndave]

true enough
but the thing is - we don't really "see" it - we can only observe the effects
out of sight; out of mind

[baltoro]

...scientists that proposed dark matter/dark energy did so because of the red-shift of light coming from distant stars,...

From what I read (and, I was probably drunk at the time), Dark Matter was invoked because the inferences about galactic gravity made by astrophysicists were in disagreement with historical observations. When scientists invoke something that the existence of which cannot be either proven or disproven (or, even observed),...something is clearly WRONG with current theory.
Here,...is an article from Scientific American: Tweak Gravity: What If There Is No Dark Matter?, 2009
Here is an abstract: Relativistic Gravitation Theory for the Modified Newtonian Dynamics Paradigm, 2004
And,...here is the complete article: Relativistic Gravitation Theory for the MOND Paradigm, 2005
...Anyway,...whenever the issue is finally resolved,...I think we should call it, the GALACTIC BALTOROID FORCE,...not, the Intergalatic Chicken Theory,...

[dedndave]

well - they "noticed" (lol) that the universe was expanding (red shift)...
which led them to hypothesize about gravity and other forces at work
i think i'd rather have tea with the Queen - lol

[baltoro]

DAVE !!!
Is Zara an astrophysicist ??? Why not just ask her ???
...You might have to hypnotize her first,...but, be scientific about it,...OK ???