Scientists Detect “Dark Flow:” Matter From Beyond the Visible Universe

Just as unseen dark energy is increasing the rate of expansion of the universe, there’s something else out there causing an unexpected motion in distant galaxy clusters. Scientists believe the cause is the gravitational attraction of matter that lies beyond the observable universe, and they are calling it “Dark Flow,” in the vein of two other cosmological mysteries, dark matter and dark energy. “The clusters show a small but measurable velocity that is independent of the universe’s expansion and does not change as distances increase,” said lead researcher Alexander Kashlinsky at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. “The distribution of matter in the observed universe cannot account for this motion.”

“We never expected to find anything like this,” he said.

Using NASA’s Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe’s (WMAP) three-year view of the microwave background and a catalog of clusters, the astronomers detected hundreds of galaxy clusters that appear to be carried along by a mysterious cosmic flow. The bulk cluster motions are traveling at nearly 2 million miles per hour. The clusters are heading toward a 20-degree patch of sky between the constellations of Centaurus and Vela.

Several astronomers teamed up to identify some 700 X-ray clusters that exhibited a subtle spectral shift. This sample includes objects up to 6 billion light-years — or nearly half of the observable universe — away.

They found this motion is constant out to at least a billion light-years. “Because the dark flow already extends so far, it likely extends across the visible universe,” Kashlinsky says.

The finding flies in the face of predictions from standard cosmological models, which describe such motions as decreasing at ever greater distances.

Cosmologists view the microwave background – a flash of light emitted 380,000 years after the big bang – as the universe’s ultimate reference frame. Relative to it, all large-scale motion should show no preferred direction.

Big-bang models that include a feature called inflation offer a possible explanation for the flow. Inflation is a brief hyper-expansion early in the universe’s history. If inflation did occur, then the universe we can see is only a small portion of the whole cosmos.

WMAP data released in 2006 support the idea that our universe experienced inflation. Kashlinsky and his team suggest that their clusters are responding to the gravitational attraction of matter that was pushed far beyond the observable universe by inflation. “This measurement may give us a way to explore the state of the cosmos before inflation occurred,” he says.

The next step is to narrow down uncertainties in the measurements. “We need a more accurate accounting of how the million-degree gas in these galaxy clusters is distributed,” says Atrio-Barandela.

“We’re assembling an even larger and deeper catalog of X-ray clusters to better measure the flow,” Ebeling adds. The researchers also plan to extend their analysis by using the latest WMAP results, released in March.

The result will appear in the October 20 edition of Astrophysical Journal Letters, which is available electronically this week.

Preprint of Dark Flow Paper, results and implications

Preprint of Dark Flow Paper, technical details

Source: NASA

76 Replies to “Scientists Detect “Dark Flow:” Matter From Beyond the Visible Universe”

  1. WOW!

    Welcome Dark Flow!

    But hey, don’t let this little thing disturb anybody … we KNOW exactly how the universe started and can explain everything.

    And most of all …

    COSMOLOGY IS NOT IN A STATE IF CRISIS!!! AND IF THAT HAS TO BE SCREAMED A THOUSAND TIMES AT YOU DUNCES UNTIL YOU BELIEVE IT, THEN SO BE IT !!!

  2. AND IF YOU DIDN’T GET THAT BECAUSE I DIDN’T SCREAM IT CORRECTLY, THEN COSMOLOGY IS NOT IN A STATE OF CRISIS!! 😉

  3. Just the phrase “astronomers detected hundreds of galaxy clusters ” is enough to stop me in my tracks. Try & wrap your little biological wetbrain around that idea, then really read the rest of the article.

  4. Seems to me that there are galaxies that are further than the observable universe. In ther words, it’s bigger than we thought.

    We also have to remember that this event happened a long time ago, early in the accepted age of the universe, and we are just now seeing it.

  5. Maybe the “Dark” quantum phenomenon along with the “Dark” zero-point field as well as all the other “Dark” things out there can help explain this to our “Dark” conciousness.

    Why couldn’t they have named it “Light” Flow just to even and balance out the names of things we don’t really understand? Frustrating.

  6. If these clusters really are converging at a particular location what’s so special about that location?

    I’m glad this isn’t a crisis for cosmology but, what is Cosmology’s explanation for this anyway?

  7. Someone correct me if I’m wrong …

    The authors of the paper are suggesting that since they are seeing galaxy clusters from such a large chunk of the universe all headed toward this one patch of sky, they think probably the matter in the whole visible universe is being drawn towards this patch at a not insignificant fraction of the speed of light.

    Just as dark matter must be made of something completely different than the kinds of matter we are familiar with, this flow towards this patch must be caused by something completely different than we are familiar with. Regular gravity from beyond the edge of our visible universe couldn’t do it because gravitational attraction decays exponentially with distance, but everything seems to be moving at the same speed towards this patch – the stuff near it and the stuff far away from it. Something that could cause everything in our whole universe to be attracted to it would have dense and massive beyond any reason. Since the stuff we are seeing moving towards the patch belongs to different time periods, then this attractor acts across time like nothing we’ve ever seen before. So we are not just talking about a simple huge cluster of galaxies beyond the edge of the visible universe.

    Before inflation, everything was pretty much as dense as possible so there couldn’t have been anything in the region next to us dense enough to cause this.

    Really, nothing makes sense within the framework of the universe as we thought we understand it. The only reasonable conclusion then is that we probably don’t really have a good handle on the universe, and most all of our stories about it are probably just so much hot air.

  8. This sounds like good evidence for Multiverse believers – there’s something massive in an adjacent universe that’s acting on our own. Far out.

    Remember, impossible is nothing. What sounds incredible now might be common knowledge in a few years.

    And maybe this has something to do with multiple-dimensions – something like we’re feeling the effects of a higher order dimensioned object moving through or near our 3D perception…??

    I’m sure our whole cosmological model is going to get a shake up when we finally figure out what all this ‘dark’ phenomenon is all about. Might be another couple hundred years…

    But all these discoveries and research are small steps in figuring out more and more about Nature.

  9. And the heaven departed as a scroll when it is rolled together;…
    Rev 6:14

    C’mon, someone had to say it :>)

  10. If the motion is constant, then wouldn’t this matter be moving by it’s own accord, unrelated to other objects? And if this is so, wouldn’t this challenge many of the theories that our understanding of the Cosmos is based on?

    Any ideas?

  11. So they think there’s a big clump of matter outside the observable universe that’s attracting these galaxy clusters, and they infer its existence from the way the galaxy clusters are moving. Er… wouldn’t that be an observation (indirect though it may be) of something outside the observable universe, and isn’t that supposed to be impossible?

  12. We have found cosmic voids millions of light years across, sheets of galaxies in a plane and now dark flow. What a mysterious universe…

  13. Sounds like it points towards Super String Theory. This could be an attraction toward another orbifold plane, other than the one we consider to be the observable universe.

  14. Is this possibly related to something I read some time back along the lines of String Theory about gravity actually being a pervasive force seeping through to our universe from other universes?

  15. It is hard to grasp the concept that the authors are getting at. They have yet to determine the acual size of the area effected, this is just the minimum size. A much larger area could be effected. This matters since whatever is pulling this area of the universe has to be enormously large in scope to do this and even larger if more of the universe is being pulled by it. Rather than invoke another universe as the massive object pulling this section of our universe, it is more likely that a (large) portion of our universe that we cannot see is pulling on it. The reason we cannot see all of the universe is that early inflation may have spread parts of our universe so far apart that there has not been enough time for light to reach us from the “far side.” Due to the effect of dark energy stretching the universe apart ever faster, we may never be able to see this part of the universe, but only indirectly see the effects it has on the part that we can still see. In fact, if darke energy is getting stronger with time, parts of the universe that we do see may get pushed too far away for us to see ever again. The most interesting part of this finding for me is that it may imply a sense of directionality to the universe by showing us in which direction the “far side” of the universe lies.

  16. This is what I suspect, though I’m probably wrong.

    Imagine you are falling feet first into a black hole, you are moving straight towards the singularity but you have not passed the event horizon. A massive object speeds by you and it’s gravitation changes your course. The object is moving fast enough to not be trapped by the black hole. You are now ‘circling the drain’ and you pass the event horizon. At this point we can’t talk about particles anymore, because physics breaks down, but we can still talk about the information which composed you. Inside an event horizon, information must always move closer to the singularity. It now becomes useful to think about 2d cross sections of your former self. A cross section of your head could not recieve information from your feet, but a cross section of your feet could recieve information from your head. likewise cross sections of your left and right foot could exchange information if they were the same distance from the singularity. Inside a black hole all information exchange looses a dimension of freedom. Its kind of like the universe inside the black hole is 2d space 1d time. A system at your feet could tell if you were moving directly at the singularity by looking at the information it recieved from your head. If the entirety of your head was moving relative to the event horizon, your feet could tell you were circling the drain.

    I believe this darkflow indicates that our observable universe is circling the drain. Our universe is a 3ds 1dt cross section inside a black hole of at least a 4ds 1dt universe, which may be embedded on even higher spaces. Our universes motion relative to the event horizon might be caused by a gravitational interaction in the past with an object that did not follow us into the event horizon. Or the information which fell into our event horizon was just never headed straight at the singularity in our future.

  17. Mark – you are preaching to the converted mate. No scientist would be arrogant enough to claim that we know it all – that is the WHOLE POINT of this little endeavour called science.

    As for cosmology being in a ‘state of crisis’, well this statement simply misses the point entirely. This is how the process of science works! We grope around in the dark bumping into things, and every now and then we find a light switch, flick it on an we can see clearly what’s been going on for the first time. We would not find that switch though if we didn’t keep on moving around and bumping into things; investigating. You say cosmology is in a state of crisis – I would argue that cosmology is in a state of rapid emergence and flux – remember that it is among the youngest branches of science in existence, and that it is only recently that we have even been able to construct the tools that will allow us to begin to answer some of our questions.

    With the emergence of ever more powerful telescopes and other tools, one thing is for sure – we will get closer to the truth every day, even if we go about that by investigating dead ends and false leads. Our knowledge and theories of the history of the universe will change radically – that’s the whole point. But this change will be based on concrete leads and experimental/observational data. We’d love to re-work our theories to explain everything as we saw it, but the fact that current cosmological theories may not be able to fully account for our observations does not mean that this same fact suggests where we go next or how to modify our theories to make them ‘correct’.

  18. Didn’t the French object to black holes being called black holes because “black hole” translated to something obscene in French? Now we have the Flow. I say we change the name of this Flow right now before it catches on. I don’t like it. It reminds me of the euphemisms; Aunt Flo, Monthly Flow, the Flow Train, etc. Maybe we should call it the Cluster Truck.

  19. This discovery adds to the mystery of our universe. Please find a few more. This way my great grandchildren will have even more to be fascinated about than I am. Bring on more mysteries.

  20. MMMMMM? for every action there is an equal and opesite reation. every scale should ballance. to a possitive there is a negative. yen and yan, male and female.

    What i am trying to say is…. look at our sun the older it gets the larger it gets as is increases in size aoutomatically it should increase in mass, slowly and constantly draw objects towards it’s center. Could “dark flow” not be the other.

    Just a guess… oddly it makes sence to me?

  21. Mark raises an interesting point that until resolved renders all other discussion pointless. If the entire distributed mass is moving under the same set of conditions, we have a serious mystery on our hands. If there is a differential of conditions across the distribution of the mass, then no real mystery and Inflation Theory picks up another piece of validation. It will be very interesting to see what more complete observations tell us. The only disappointing result would be that it is all an observational error.

  22. The proclamation of a crisis of cosmology is relying on Thomas S. Kuhn’s idea of shifts in paradigm in science. To throw a doctrine into a state of crisis, it says, enough significant anomalies must have been discovered, which speak against the current paradigm.

    On the other hand, “anomalies” can strengthen the current paradigm, if they are explained by it. Do look back on the 21th of May article:

    “Could Dark Matter be the Root Cause of Flyby Anomalies?

    … In a new study from the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, one researcher thinks dark matter might be messing around with our robotic explorers…”

    But four month later the subversive “anomaliy” was already going to loose it’s power. Remember the 18th of September article

    “Flyby Anomalies Explained?

    … Other explanations had proposed dark matter or ‘Unruh radiation’ could be the answer. But … we just haven’t been doing the physics right”, thus “(General Relativity) does not need to be questioned and the flyby anomaly is merely due to an incomplete analysis using conventional physics”.

    So we will see what the potential of the discovery of “Dark Flow” turns out to be.

  23. I think this is probably a relic from the big bang expansion period. Gravity would have much more influence when the hot young universe was much denser. It might be analogous to pulling an object with a magnet and then yanking the magnet away before the object makes contact. The object would remain in motion in the absence of any friction. This might be a clue to the structure of the pre-expansion universe.

  24. Wow! Goodbye, Copernican Principle…

    The Woos are going to have a feast with this one.

    Me? I’ll wait for Planck results and many, many more galaxy clusters analysed before I expend further thought on it… 😉

  25. If we’re playing what if:
    How about a new class of of supermassive objects? Maybe something that is moving at ultrareletivistic speeds and creating some kind of free flow area behind it. Kinda like drafting in racing, sans the air resistance thing of course, but a similar effect

    But maybe it’s just the Flying Spagetti Monster afterall

  26. Could be that space/time is being de-created in that area. It would cause the distance between objects to appear to be shrinking as if there were motion.

  27. I hope these researchers don’t turn those telescopes to point the other way. Imagine if they found another dark flow going the other way. Hmm, an encircling belt of quantum critical pre-matter, just going with the flow.

    An orbiting Dark Toroid? Oh well, back to the drawing board, again.

  28. I thought it was accepted that the “speed of gravity” is the same as the speed of light. How could these clusters be affected by a gravitational force yet the source is beyond the observable universe?

    Seems contradictive

  29. There’s something missing here…

    It’s either observable or it is not.

    If we can see galaxies reacting to it, then it is observable.

    Information travels no fast than the speed of light, so if it’s beyond the observable universe, then we can’t be seeing its effects.

  30. All joking aside how could we be experiencing the effects of something beyond the light horizon? C is the limiter for gravity as well after all.

  31. To say that Big Bang is not in crisis is hoping for a comfortable landing when your balloon’s got a hole in it.

    The observable universe is surely the part of the infinite universe that is visible. What lies beyond the visible is more of the same, and why wouldn’t it be. The lack of visibleness is due to light erosion as demonstrated by redshift. 13 billion light years in distance is about it. But just because we can’t see beyond doesn’t mean it’s not there.

    The light, shining globally from billions of stars, assumed to be the ‘earliest in the universe’ is shining 13 billion light-years beyond into the no-space, or is it being bounced back by something unmentionable?

    And what about expansion of these visible galaxies over that same 13 billion light-years? Can anyone say that they are still there – and keep a straight face?

    To accept that something lies beyond the perceived boundary has to be Big Bang balloon’s hard landing.

    David

  32. From what I can tell, the speculation is that the gravitational attraction from before inflation set the flow in motion, so even though the responsible masses have moved away beyond the cosmological horizon during inflation, the flow is still going.

  33. This whole issue of movement of these galaxies are with reference to the CMB… I remember reading that this background itself has small fluctuations….And these velocities are very small wtih respect to the fluctuations in CMB? Something sounds funny to me here….Can someone explain me plz….

  34. @ Yoo

    That would cause the clusters to actually lose velocity if that were the case. But the movement is uniform, which indicates something is still there as an influence.

  35. I contend that dark matter and dark energy and now dark flow, are the medium in which the big bang occurrred. Namely the preexisting universe..

  36. The discovery of superhorizon gravitational pull was predicted in the theory by Holman, Mersini-Houghton and Takahashi. They also predicted the giant void, observed a year later.

  37. The explanation is staring us in the face – it is the River Styx flowing towards Hades. Homer vindicated.

  38. I have posted several times earlier this year that the visible universe might be a finite sized speck in a boundless void. The visible universe looks to be about 13.5 light years radius in any directions. So it is no ‘leap of faith’ to think there is more of the same cosmological stuff we presently see beyond maximum red-shift in all directions . Why then would it be so difficult to grasp that clusters of galaxies could be migrating from ‘the other side’ of max red into our field of view. My sense is more of this ‘dark flow’ is waiting to be discovered in all directions. The ‘big bang’ may be nothing more than prebang void energy morphing into dark matter and then into the visible matter making up the (our) visible universe. This morphing of energy into matter could be happening, at some undetectable rate, right now throughout the void our visible universe occupies. Again, Occum’s razor comes to mind.

  39. this puzzles me somehow. i thought nothing that conserves (like matter & energy) can reach greater speed than light (ok, shadows can reach higher speeds). so… interaction from what’s outside visible universe with what’s inside must propagate at speeds higher that speed of light (otherwise we wouldn’t be able to notice it). how is that possible?

  40. Not so long ago, there was nothing dark about the universe and explaining what we see was all about Einstein’s point of view.

    Now the visible Universe seems to be a speckle within a much larger dark reality!

    How incredible can this be?

  41. I always say that science is 1,000 years ahead of religion but I guess that I need to qualify that to applied science. Less than 100 years ago the first “Island Universe” was discovered and now possibly another universe WOW!!!!!!! Our understanding of science is moving exponentially. Incidentally, the reason Intelligent Design is being embraced has very little to do with God in schools but rather because creationism can no longer survive as a religious tenet as could the earth as center of the Universe post Gallelo. MOK

  42. Does anyone else feel like they are about to watch an old black and white scifi film with that title?

    IT CAME FROM BEYOND THE UNIVERSE!

  43. I also was wondering about the light speed limit and gravity.
    As far as I know, gravity “travels” with the speed of light at best. How is that possible that something is pulling those galaxies that doesn’t give us any photons?
    I came to the same conclusion as Yoo: then it has to be a remaining pull from before the inflation. But after the objects mooved out of the observable universe, should not the gravitational effect “wear off”? What happens if that is the case, the force switches off (??), the clusters keep moving but the acceleration (force) is cancelled. They should slow down, held back by (dark/normal) matter in the universe visible from there.
    The biggest problem for me is that this wandering is with (almost) the same speed everywhere (where was mesured). It shall not! If gravity is in effect, objects farther away from the source shall move slower. Also we should take into consideration that the object 6 billion light years away are 6 billion years before us and they were the part of this flow 6 billion years, and the nearer clusters are just 0.5 billion. They shall not have the same acceleration.
    I feel it will be some error in mesurements/calculations… Certainly hope its not so, because if this applies for an extremely large amount of clusters and can be approved by other means then this is simply CRAZY!!! 😀

  44. If this is caused by something more extravagant (multiverse, multiple dimensions) or points out that gravity is working some other way than thought… I cant wait to get knowing!
    Most exciting paper for years.

  45. Come on, own up..who or what forgot to knot the balloon!
    I hope its not an error, love it when we have to rethink what we rethought after much contemplation.
    I wonder where else in the sky this might be happening..

  46. Let’s imagine that ‘Creation’ is the recycling action associated with an infinite universe, as a re-distribution of matter/energy. It spreads, from every shining star, hurtling through space cris-crossing each and every other star’s emission, within both visible and non-visible range. What ever it strikes it becomes either absorbed by it or reflected by it. It gradually changes by erosion to a visible red – and then what? Red would appear to be the last visible component on the list to survive, – so when that’s gone, what is left over, Dark Matter, perhaps?

    Some will collect into a growing nebula and thus into a star again. Implosion whilst forming into a star, recreates possibly the full range of elements within the atomic table. So, the star appears to be the alchemist and source of all those elements we know of. Each star gives birth to a family of planets, moons, other solids and gases.

    Yes, that’s basically my cosmology. There is nothing in the universe that can’t be explained if the universe is of infinite capacity, and that we are right in the middle of a visible portion of it. How could we be anywhere else?

    I suspected many years ago that there would be wandering planets – ones that had broken away from their gravity shrinking star mother. We now know that they exist, even though without official explanation. And I think it is they, that already have an atmosphere, that will continue to build on that base and finally become nebular and new stars. And maybe the ‘slingshot’ of each one breaking away from its orbit will be what is thought an expanding universe. As we know now that the universe is expanding in every direction and not from some mythical center point, gives credence to that theory. One only has to look at the shape of a galaxy to see this pattern.

    But, to expect all of this to occur within thirteen billion years, or a hundred, is sheer nonsense. So the suspected hole in the bubble, as I call it in this forum, has to be the beginning of the end of Big Bang Confinement.

    David

  47. quite a strange, intriguing mystery. the more we know, the less we know. but the more we know. we are small. but that’s not a bad thing. hopefully it is a reminder of what’s important with limited time and breath.

  48. @ Nancy Atkinson:

    “Cosmologists view the microwave background – a flash of light emitted 380,000 years after the big bang”

    What event caused this flash?

    Is the CMB not a consequence of the Big Bang itself?

  49. It could be something so simple that it’s obvious

    How about this:

    big bang – start of what we consider time and matter

    everything directionally is now moving toward the end of time – what ever that may be

    Dark matter – actually light from stars just bouncing back and forth around the universe from the beginning to end to the end of time but diffusing to the point of not displaying anything.

    Think about it , we use light to see things but what would light look like if it was simply reflected back from the edge of the universe back at us. It wouldn’t show anything but just be essentially energy flowing around in random patterns affected by the normal laws of gravity etc…

    light = energy
    energy = mass
    mass = gravity

    Probably all wrong but about as good an explanation for dark matter as any of the others I’ve heard

  50. To: Erik, I believe your comment correct that light and gravity travel at or about the same speed. I’m not sure why there would be confusion where gravity is attracting something and no photons. The earth’s gravity pulls on the moon and there isn’t any evidence of photons released from anything as a result of this pull. I suspect the ‘dark flow of galixies’ from the other side of red max may be influenced by the same force(s) responsible for the motion of galixies in the obsevable universe. I further believe gravity travels with clusters of moving galaxies and why not? Galaxies in our visible universe that disappear over the red max barrier must take their gravity with. I don’t think there would be any residual gravity remaing in the visible universe. I don’t think there is any conflict of ideas on this subject. This ‘dark flow’ from the other side might be detectable in all directions and, to some degree, explain all the cosmic chaos we see.

  51. So either there’s a bubble or bladder or wall, or there isn’t. If there isn’t, that explains how light energy could be escaping beyond from distant galaxies, ie perhaps 13 billion light years beyond.

    To satisfy the law of conservation there should be an equal quantity entering our visible portion of the universe from beyond.

    To satisfy reason, that 13 billion light-years has to be added to the 13 billion that it has taken for their light to reach us. Plus expansion within that same period. Mathematicians, do your stuff.

    David

  52. Here’s a thought.
    Perhaps when we speak of a star or galaxy, we should refer to its radiant global diameter, which, of course is dependent upon it s age. If we can see it and can assess its age we should then be able to calculate its global effect in the universe.

    When we gaze at it or its light is shining on us, we are absorbing some of that star.

    And another thing – If our sun is only 5 or 6 billion years old, its light hasn’t gone halfway out to the edge of the visible universe yet.

    David

  53. Dark flow phenomenon causing force drawing someone truly massive property is located in the visible universe outside? How does this tractive force is conveyed?

    For example, the stars radiate throughout the energy of waves with particles of nature! Particles moving mode, which is already in place and at the same time, the region can move particles emanating from the various starfish, and they continue the movement quite the same direction away from the area in which the stars is!

    The visible universe outside is truly massive concentration of energy which radiate energy waves, which have the nature of quasars. the same region can become the galaxy from several different angles, so that the business continues to quite the same direction, at the same time, when the first stars emit flammable Light. As a dark flow phenomenon can be explained logically!

  54. Hanging on by a thread of Dark Matter. Yep, that’s Big Bang. A beginning seems to be a necessity in the science of cosmology. Why?

    Reading many opinions on this report one gets that feeling, that we here on earth are right in the middle of a created universe, whether by God or a singularity suddenly flying apart, and that some new stuff is embarrassingly discovered just beyond what was thought to be the ‘bladder’. And for the sake of accepted cosmological science, that’s it. The boundary, created be a beginning and its expansion has to be there to protect this crazy BB philosophy.

    I have put this question far more than once:-
    [1] Light from a galaxy at the presumed edge of the universe takes 13 billion years to reach us. Stars shine globally, so where is their light going to that shines beyond the perceived boundary of the universe a mere 700 million light-years away?

    [2] In an expanding Big Bang scenario, and since the light from those most distant visible galaxies has taken 13 billion years to reach us, where are those galaxies now if not 13 billion light-years further away or more? And that’s probably more than 12.3 billion light-years beyond the perceived bladder.

    So add these three rational probabilities together and you get 13 plus 13 plus 13 billion light-years.

    That is:-
    [a] Time that their light has taken to reach us plus,
    [b] Expansion from where those galaxies were to where they are now, plus
    [c] Light penetration distance from where they are now away beyond them. equals
    Probably far more than 39 billion light-years.

    We cannot have expansion and in the same breath say, ‘those galaxies are still there’.

    We cannot say that there is a bladder 700 million light-years beyond those farthest light visible galaxies whilst conservation insists that light from those galaxies is being bounced back into the universe – not unless someone can convincingly prove that a mirror, or something similar, exists to do just that.

    But, since the perceived age of the universe is based upon the visible radius of light, and in light of this new discovery, surely it’s time for Big Bang and its foundational cosmology to bow out and give eternity a chance.

    David

  55. Take a pair dividers – describe a 100 mm diameter circle near the bottom of a sheet of paper – That is the boundary/containment of the universe. – From the centre to the boundary is 13.7 billion light-years.

    About 700 million light-years in from the upper edge of your circle there is one of the youngest galaxies in the universe – put the point of your dividers on it, about 2 mm inside the boundary and describe another circle.

    A galaxy shines its light globally. Since we are 13 billion light-years from it, we would assume that its light will reach within and almost equally beyond the so-called containment of the universe.

    But since that galaxy is racing away by what is called expansion, it cannot be now, where it was when the light we see shone from it. So, place the point of your dividers on the upper edge of your upper circle and describe another circle. And the upper edge of your third circle will be a minimum of 39 billion light-years away from us.

    The word, containment, derived from the belief that there was a beginning, expansion, and an outer limit, or edge, of the universe, has to be absolute nonsense.

    Creation, is an ongoing, eternal, recycling phenomenon. Stars come and go – planets come and go – we come and go, etc. etc. Nothing is lost and nothing is gained.

    David

  56. Matter and “dark matter”
    Fact and Speculation.
    =========.
    1.
    Fact.
    The detected material mass of the matter in the Universe is so small
    (the average density of all substance in the Universe is approximately
    p=10^-30 g/sm^3) that it cannot “ close “ the Universe and therefore
    our Universe as whole is “ open”, endless.
    But what to do with the infinite Universe the physicists don’t know.
    The concept of infinite/ eternal means nothing
    to a scientists. They do not understand how they could
    draw any real, concrete conclusions from this characteristic.
    A notions of “more”, “less”, “equally, “similar” could not
    be conformed to a word infinity or eternity.
    The Infinity/Eternity is something, that has no borders,
    has no discontinuity; it could not be compared to anything.
    Considering so, scientists came to conclusion that the
    infinity/eternity defies to a physical and mathematical definition
    and cannot be considered in real processes.
    Therefore they have proclaimed the strict requirement
    (on a level of censor of the law):
    « If we want that the theory would be correct,
    the infinity/eternity should be eliminated ».
    Thus they direct all their mathematical abilities,
    all intellectual energy to the elimination of infinity.
    Therefore they invented an abstract “dark matter” and ” dark energy”.
    They say: ” 90% or more of the matter in the Universe is unseen.
    And nobody knows what it is.
    2.
    Speculation.
    Unknown “dark matter “ it is matter which makes up the difference
    between observed mass of a galaxies and calculated mass……
    which….will …” close “ ….the Universe, as …….
    as……the astrophysicists want.
    3.
    The Dark Matter is another official dogma of our astronomy.
    / V. H. Vergon. /
    ==============..

  57. The ‘dark flow’ is proof for my darkfieldtheory. In this theory the ‘dark flow’ belongs in a rotational torus-universe (based on 3T time physics in stead of 1T-time in a Big Bang).
    The torus-universe is much larger than the Big Bang-universe and explains why the expansion is different beacuse of the rotational effects in the torus-universe. My theory ‘rings the bells’ for leaving the Big Bang behind. The ‘dark flow’ extends the mystery around dark energy and dark matter even more. Theoretical and practical (independent) evidence is given in my website http://www.darkfieldnavigator.com, where I describe a new ‘recalculation-cosmology’.
    A new formula shows how dark energy and dark matter effects the elementary spin (h). These effects lead to a rotational torus-universe, wherein the ‘hubble flow’ (the constant expansion-speed of the Big Bang) is replaced by a not constant recalculation of spacetime. This leads to the ‘dark flow’ in a torus-universe.

    Kind Regards,
    Dan Visser (ingE, cosmologist, PhD* and artist).

    I invite journlists to contact me to write about my new cosmology.

    Note: http://www.darkfieldnavigator.com (juridical terms applied, all rights reserved, first contact me by email)

    October 20, 2008

  58. To Dan Visser,

    How about dropping all the complicating mystery and just accept that light has a visible content that allows us to see it for its journey of approximately 13 billion years. At that point it has run out of red and becomes the dark matter, energy, that continues on its way for some more billions of years.

    Isn’t it easier to accept that we are simply in the middle of our ‘light visible’ part of the universe? Perhaps we ought to call the so called edge of the universe the ‘boundary of cosmic visibility’. BCV for short.

    Yes, I know that would be the demise of Big Bang and a 13.7 billion year old universe, but if there is no boundary we just may have to accept that the universe is infinite in size and age. There’s nothing upsetting about that except that all the text books will have to burned, [Not a problem, that’s been done before]. A lot of scientists will be devastated. – And the church?

    Not really. if Creationists feel threatened by such a possibility, don’t worry. – Creation is happening all the time. The arena is almost certainly boundless, and all the ingredients are there, so why did it have to have a beginning? Why would it ever come to an end? Why is there confusion about what is meant by beginning and what is meant by creation? And we do understand enough of the physics involved to know that a recycling creational activity exists. And if God did the creation bit, then He had to come from somewhere, – didn’t he?

    Genesis Continuous had it’s [beginning] in 1972 and I’ve been [creating] it ever since. But ‘Beginning’ in that sense, doesn’t mean that the paper, the pen, and the ink, had to also have a beginning.

    Cheers

    David

  59. Most models for cosmology are based on conjecture that is being modified to fit observations. Quantum Physicist did it with the discovery of the atom. How does this new information support the theory of inflation? Inflation supports the big bang and expansion.

  60. My first impression regardng the possible darkflow situation highlighted by WMAP, is that this may just be a first example of an Einstein-Rosen bridge. And potentially a support to new theories regarding gateways to parallel universes.

  61. Well John, anything’s possible. But what if we suddenly zapped away to one of these galaxies on the so called edge of this universe. How would it appear from there? Would we be able to see a dividing line between our universe and another one? Or would we look back at our own Milkyway and reckon that it is out on the edge?

    Just by accepting what we see and understand, and realising that what exists beyond is beyond the limit of the visible from our vantage point, why not simply accept that it is all part of ONE infinite mass.

    There is no reason for a beginning, but only a reason for constant change and recycling, which can all be summed up as CREATION, be it the formation of a star, a planet, or one small stone from a volcanic eruption.

    David

  62. The Dark Energy and the Vacuum.
    #
    “Dark energy, this mysterious stuff in the vacuum of space
    which makes the universe want to accelerate, is the basis
    for standard cosmology today because it explains much
    of what we see,”
    / Research by Dr David Wiltshire, from
    New Zealand’s University of Canterbury /.
    ============= . .
    My opinion.

    The Dark Energy is the Vacuum.
    Vacuum is not a dead space.
    Vacuum is some kind of Energetic Space as the
    Quantum Theory says.
    The Energetic Vacuum itself is ‘ The Dark Energy ‘.
    The physicists only invent new word ‘Dark Energy ‘ instead of
    to say ‘ ENERGETIC VACUUM ’.
    #
    Dark Energy may be Vacuum
    http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2007-01/uoc-dem011607.php
    ========== . .
    Everything began from Infinite Energetic Vacuum: T=0K.
    Somehow, the energy is extracted from the Vacuum
    (the Energetic Dirac Soup) and turned into particles.
    The Materialistic World gets its finite being
    from an Infinite Energetic Being – Vacuum: T=0K.

    To understand this ‘speculation’ we must know:
    1. What is Vacuum: T=0K ?
    2. Which virtual particles can exist in Vacuum?
    3. How can virtual particles turn into real particles?
    ======== .
    Until now the physicists ignore the Vacuum Energy T=0K
    because it is the Zero Point Energy for our measuring devices.
    Because the Absolute Zero Point Energy is border for our
    measuring devices.
    Can this fact be enough reason to stop our investigation?
    ==========..
    Best wishes.
    Israel Sadovnik. / Socratus.
    #
    When the next revolution rocks physics,
    chances are it will be about nothing—the vacuum, that endless
    infinite void.
    http://discovermagazine.com/topics/space
    http://discovermagazine.com/2008/aug/18-nothingness-of-space-theory-of-everything
    ================ . .
    Please, have patience and wait “when the next revolution rocks physics.”
    ==========..

  63. You know, I think that they all know the truth. They all know that there is a beyond and the beyond is infinite. But they also know that all the text books will have to be destroyed and millions of trees will die for their paper, just to write the new ones.

    So who is going to take the first step into this new Bangless infinity of continuous creation, of light streaming every which way, carrying subatomic particles to new locations, unfettered by man’s desire to contain it. within his tiny radius of technological vision.

    ‘One giant step for mankind’ will have a totally knew meaning, on the day that the bubble bursts.

    We’ll be free to look at the solar system in a new light and see that Mars is possibly 3 billion years older than earth and Venus 3 billion years younger. And maybe Neptune could be 20 billion years old. And the sun? – We’ve got a lot to learn.

  64. I once heard that if you want to lose faith in humanity, then read online comment sections. It’s absolutely true. If the average intelligence exhibited here is representative of humanity, then I’ve just lost faith in humanity.

Comments are closed.