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A gigantic galactic graveyard lurks in the distant universe, and the death toll is growing.
New observations establish a supercluster centered on the cluster CL0016+16 as the largest galactic congregation ever found, astronomers report in Astronomy & Astrophysics. The supercluster extends even farther than previously thought, and it’s drawing in more and more galaxies.
CL0016+16 lies about 6.7 billion light-years away from Earth. That cluster was first observed in 1981, and later observations hinted that it might be just one of a cluster of clusters. Observations by David Koo of the University of California, Santa Cruz in 1996 pointed to a large structure extending from the main cluster.
“There are many predictions for large-scale structure in the universe, but nobody has really confirmed that this large-scale cluster exists in the distant universe,” says Masayuki Tanaka from the European Southern Observatory, a coauthor of the new report. “We actually see this massive structure in the distant universe. Not theory, not prediction — this is the real universe.”
Tanaka and his colleagues made several observations of the region between August 2007 and December 2008 using the Subaru Telescope in Hawaii and the Very Large Telescope in Chile. They found that the supercluster extends at least 60 million light-years in one direction beyond the 100 million light-years already known, and it could reach even farther.
“It must be gigantic,” Koo says. “This thing is not only big, it’s big in the opposite direction from what we saw. It’s probably twice as big as we thought.”
Galaxies that group together tend to switch off each others’ star formation, “bringing a flourishing galaxy into a dead one,” says study coauthor Alexis Finoguenov of the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Garching, Germany.
Astronomers think that grouped galaxies speed up, stripping away their neighbors’ hot gas, the raw material for forming stars. When galaxies cluster, “there is always a threshold when groups go from an encouraging environment to a suffocating environment,” Finoguenov says.
Galaxies are known to clump together along dark matter filaments, which grew from slight variations in the concentration of matter after the Big Bang. The filaments extend for millions of light-years in an enormous cosmic web, providing a framework for the universe’s large-scale structure.
Tanaka’s team identified tens of clumps of galaxies surrounding CL0016+16, some of which are up to a thousand times more massive than the Milky Way.
And most of those galaxies are either dead or dying, meaning they’re not making new stars. The tremendous gravitational pull of the central cluster is drawing in other galaxies, which will eventually cease star formation in the growing galactic graveyard.
On the bright side, “this will be an ideal data set to study when, where and how galaxies die,” Tanaka says.
Galaxies near the Milky Way, at least, are at a safe distance from the graveyard. “We will probably never turn into such an environment anyway,” Finoguenov says. “We will keep living.”
Found in: Atom & Cosmos
- Cowen, Ron. 2009. Heavyweight Galaxies in the Young Universe. Science News 175(April 25):9. [Go to]
- Tanaka, M., et al. 2009. The spectroscopically confirmed huge cosmic structure at z=0.55. Astronomy&Astrophysics. DOI: 10.105/0004-6361/200912929.
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Plasma Cosmology theorizes that the filaments are current-conducting lines of ionized hydrogen and electrons carrying power on a vast scale, enough to power galaxies and the stars within them- all according to known laws of physics and observed behaviors of plasma. No fictitious, unseen, 'Dark-whatever' necessary to understand the observations.
More information for this entirely plausible theory that utilizes established laws and observations of physics can be found by searching Google for 'Thunderbolts info'.
Hidden Dimensions?
It Is Space-Distance, Not Space-Time
A suggested something that's worth a "work on".
The science establishment would undoubtedly dismsiss it...
The Basic Implications Of E=Total[m(1 + D)]
http://www.the-scientist.com/community/posts/list/180/122.page#3108
a recapitulation
A. Its essential statement
"Extrapolation of the expansion of the universe backwards in time to the early hot dense "Big Bang" phase, using general relativity, yields an infinite density and temperature at a finite time in the past. At age 10^-35 seconds the Universe begins with a cataclysm that generates space and time, as well as all the matter and energy the Universe will ever hold."
E = Energy content of the universe
m = mass content of the universe
D = distance, Total = in all spatial directions, from the point of Big-Bang, of singularity's energy-mass superposition
At D=0, E was = m and both E and m were, together, all the energy and matter the Universe will ever hold. Since the onset of the cataclysm, E remains constant and m diminishes as D increases.
The increase of D is the initial inflation, followed by the ongoing expansion, of what became the galactic clusters.
At 10^-35 seconds, D was already a fraction of a second above zero. This is when gravity starts. This is what started gravity. At this instance starts the energetic space texture, starts the straining of the space texture, and starts the space-texture-memory, gravity, that most probably will eventually overcome expansion and initiate re-impansion back to singularity.
B. Some of its further essential implications beyond Einstein-Hubble and re classical-quantum physics
And again and again : "On The Origin Of Origins"
http://www.the-scientist.com/community/posts/list/160/122.page#2753
1. It promotes commonsensical scientific critical thinking beyond Einstein-Hubble.
The universe is the archetype of quantum within classical physics, which is the fractal oneness of the universe.
Astronomically there are two physics. A classical Newtonian physics behaviour of and between galactic clusters, and a quantum physics behaviour WITHIN the galactic clusters.
The onset of big-bang's inflation, the cataclysmic resolution of the Original Superposition, started gravity, with formation - BY DISPERSION - of galactic clusters that behave as classical Newtonian bodies and continuously reconvert their original pre-inflation masses back to energy, thus fueling the galactic clusters expansion, and with endless quantum-within-classical intertwined evolutions WITHIN the clusters in attempt to delay-resist this reconversion.
2. There is no call, no need, for any dark energy. The energy of the universe is conserved. The mass of the universe is conserved in the form of energy, the energy fueling the clusters expansion. At the next universal singularity, at the next D = 0, there will again be E = m for a small fraction of a second...just wait and see...
Following Newton (1) gravity is decreased when mass is decreased and (2) acceleration of a body is given by dividing the force acting upon it by its mass. By plain common sense the combination of those two 'laws' may explain the accelerating cosmic expansion of galaxy clusters and the laws that drive it, based on the E/ m/ D relationship suggested above..
3. There is no call, no need, for a Higgs Particle.
The resolution of energy-mass superposition is reverted when D = 0. Shockingly sad, but must be soberingly faced rationally.
C. Its implications re the origin and nature of life beyond Darwin, re selection for survival
For Nature, Earth's biosphere is one of the many ways of temporarily constraining an amount of energy within a galaxy within a galactic cluster, for thus avoiding, as long as possible, spending this particularly constrained amount as part of the fuel that maintains the clusters expansion.
It Is Space-Distance, Not Space-Time
Genes are THE Earth's organisms and ALL other organisms are their temporary take-offs.
For Nature genes are genes are genes. None are more or less important than the others. Genes and their take-offs, all Earth organisms, are temporary energy packages and the more of them there are the more enhanced is the biosphere, Earth's life, Earth's temporary storage of constrained energy. This is the origin, the archetype, of selected modes of survival.
The early genes came into being by solar energy and lived a very long period solely on direct solar energy. Metabolic energy, the indirect exploitation of solar energy, evolved at a much later phase in the evolution of Earth's biosphere.
Dov Henis
(Comments from 22nd century)
Updated Life's Manifest May 2009
http://www.physforum.com/index.php?showtopic=14988&st=480&#entry412704
http://www.the-scientist.com/community/posts/list/140/122.page#2321
I could swear that I've read (and/or was taught) that, when Galaxies make near miss pass bys, the gas in them gets so 'stirred up', that this fact actually promoted New Star Formation; sooooo...one would assume......
I live for the Death of the Hubble Constant - it's all sooooo 'Pre-Copernican', soooooo "And The Lord God CREATED".........
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