Enormous hole in the Universe

Well, I was out cruising around in integalactic cyberspace, as one does, when all of a sudden with no warning, I stumbled upon this:

Enormous Hole in the Universe


As it says in the article, it has been known for some time that bubbles of totally empty space exist in the universe (note: this is not the same thing as a black hole), but nothing on anything like this scale has been seen before. Just imagine it: you get in your spaceship and fly off to the centre of that void. Nothing but totally empty nothingness for 500 million light years in every direction. If that isn't staggeringly awesome, I don't know what is.

If you want directions on how to get there, or at least see where it is in the sky, check out this guy's web page.

Cool! I wonder what would cause that? And why they didn't expect it... hmmm.

Meanwhile, you might enjoy this too. More of an optical rarity than anything, I guess - but still very cool.
Einstein rings are caused when two galaxies are seen in alignment and one bends the light of the other around it like a lens, so you get a ring. A few days ago Hubble discovered 3 galaxies aligned to make a double ring.







More here

Well I went out last night looking for it and couldn't find it anywhere, sorry. Are you sure there is nothing out there? Because I looked and found nothing.

It just goes to prove that we are all figments of each other's imaginations and that verily god does not exist as the picture book daddy with the long beard, an illegitimate son with a whore for a mother and a spectral bosom pal who takes swearing at him very seriously indeed...

Nah Janx Spirit! I didn't see that neither.

Whatever. If you think for a moment God doesn't have a massive invisibility cloak, which would look EXACTLY like this nothing (and all other nothings and non-things) and hence is PROVEN, then you are all wrong/going to hell/etc, etc. (add personalised bible verse here, whatever you interpret to fit best)

Shit Marsh, never thought of that.

Anyway, it's Bible you heathen, God shall strike thee down. (After removing His invisibility cloak with a dastardly flourish and a spine chilling cackle)

Hope she is wearing fresh undies before she whips that cloak off.

Birmingham mate. Birmingham.

Shit! Yeah. It could have been Birmingham.

STOP PRESS! NEWSFLASH! Astronomers find enormous Birmingham in the Universe.

`I refuse to prove that I exist,' says God, `for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing.'
`But,' says Man, `The Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED.'
`Oh dear,' says God, `I hadn't thought of that,' and promptly disappears in a puff of logic.

bible jible. It's all dirigibles to me.

Why they didn't expect it is explained in this link:


So far, so good. But...


As for what caused it:


Meanwhile, someone has taken advantage of a Wiki article on the WMAP cold spot to put forward a theory of a parallel universe as a possible explanation.

Who knows, maybe our universe "budded" off from another one, and the void is where the umbilical cord was attached?

Nice to know there's a lot we still don't know.

A void is still a void. A void isn't nothing. There is no nothing or is there? At any rate, fascinating stuff! Best news I have read in years. You really made my day GreenTea, have been waiting for something like this to be discovered for so long.

So, Professor Ujumaflip, you are credited with discovering nothing. How do you feel?

Empty

Well, photons pass through it, so it's not completely empty...

(Sin: just like the M6...)

What would be really cool would be if astronomers were to look at it with the NOT (Nordic Optical Telescope). Great title for a research paper: "NOT Observations of Nothing".

You people (and ofcourse the Scientists) have a looooong way to go...on this one...Scientists might be close to finding God's footprints than you bunch ...
Anyway, keep searching folks...until one day you discover that the TRUTH was always very near to you but you were blind to it all the time!
Go on..keep busy...
As for me, i will blissfully enjoy the radience of the true God and live in peace...
Truth. Punkt!.

How do you reckon that ? Photons don't require any kind of thing to pass thru

@meckle: I suppose what he meant was that the photons themselves are physical entities, so if it contains photons, it isn't empty.

what constitutues a physical entity? Photons have zero mass so that may also be discussed if you have nothing to do.

Yes, photons may have zero mass, but they also have a fair bit of energy. E=mc².