🧵 Newly discovered cosmic megastructure challenges theories of the universe
Anonymous at Fri, 3 May 2024 12:54:07 UTC No. 16157651
What broader implications would this have regarding our understanding of the universe? I'd love to hear Neil degrasse Tyson's perspective on this. But more to the point, what are your thoughts about this /sci/?
>Newly discovered cosmic megastructure challenges theories of the universe
>A 1.3bn light year-sized ring discovered by PhD student in Lancashire appears to defy the cosmological principle assumption
>“From current cosmological theories we didn’t think structures on this scale were possible,” said Alexia Lopez, a PhD student at the University of Central Lancashire, who led the analysis. “We could expect maybe one exceedingly large structure in all our observable universe.”
>Zooming out on the universe should, in theory, reveal a vast, featureless expanse. Yet the Big Ring is one of a growing list of unexpectedly large structures. Others include the Giant Arc, which appears just next to the Big Ring and was also discovered by Lopez in 2021. Cosmologists calculate the current theoretical size limit of structures to be 1.2bn light years, but the Big Ring and the Giant Arc, which spans an estimated 3.3bn light years, breach this limit.
https://amp.theguardian.com/science
Anonymous at Fri, 3 May 2024 19:41:17 UTC No. 16158118
AYYLIUMS
AYYLIUMS AY-AY-AYY-AYYLIUMS MAN
OH SHIT OHHHH-HOOH
Anonymous at Fri, 3 May 2024 19:48:44 UTC No. 16158130
Every other week there's some new, crazy thing that supposedly calls everything into question.
And then no new physics coming from it.
Odd.
Anonymous at Sat, 4 May 2024 00:48:21 UTC No. 16158396
>>16158130
The only physics news I heard about recently was in optics with some attosecond measurement improvements.
But yes, the lack of solid state physics news is surprising, especially considering recent developments. Maybe they are coordinating a collective release date in the future. Or frantically trying to engineer a new material to have something to present which does the job. However such research is hard to automate with AI because all AI can do is extrapolate from real world data and with nothing to show for, it will extrapolate nonsense. But the AI problem should be solvable given the right circumstances, especially if we rely less on simulated and more on truthful data (which is more and more the case). And if fed with truthful data, AI might actually be useful to material scientists.
(Another problem with AI is that of information leakage, but that issue should be solved with recent advances at OpenAI except for advanced prompting techniques... So much about non physics AI news)
>>16157651
>Newly discovered cosmic megastructure challenges theories of the universe
Tbh the old theories of gravity still apply, so this megastructure is surely interesting for astrophysicists, but not something that deeply challenges the theory of gravitation or so.
Anonymous at Sat, 4 May 2024 14:42:05 UTC No. 16159071
>>16157651
I think it's a sign of God.
Anonymous at Sat, 4 May 2024 14:47:20 UTC No. 16159084
>>16157651
What if it's interdimensional aliens and this is their portal sort of like that movie Event Horizon where they make a gate. Maybe the world leader need to meet and discuss nuking the ring before something comes through it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVw
Anonymous at Sat, 4 May 2024 14:50:36 UTC No. 16159092
>>16157651
>I'd love to hear Neil degrasse Tyson's perspective on this.
The ring is the lips of our universe, where it kissed itself in the mirror
Anonymous at Sat, 4 May 2024 14:53:57 UTC No. 16159101
>>16157651
please stop with the r*ddit tier bait threads
Anonymous at Sat, 4 May 2024 15:17:33 UTC No. 16159146
>>16157651
Do I hear a... uhm... news whose importance is... well let's say... massively inflated and that has probably no meaningful... what was it?... impact on research? Mhmm. yes.
>A 1.3bn light year-sized ring discovered by PhD student in Lancashire appears to defy the cosmological principle assumption
So, the other PhD students kind of... don't count yah? Like they didn't contribute to the study. Like I couldn't have discovered the structure if I was just given access to the data? No?
>>16158130
>Every other week there's some new, crazy thing that supposedly calls everything into question.
>And then no new physics coming from it.
As if the news was nothing but... paid advertisement? Yes? To prove how much our tax money is not wasted on such research.
Anonymous at Sat, 4 May 2024 15:32:45 UTC No. 16159175
>>16159146
I think we should spend more tax dollars on research. There's so many things we don't know. I'd cut our military spending in half and use it for scientific and medical research.
Anonymous at Sat, 4 May 2024 15:34:40 UTC No. 16159179
>>16159175
>I'd cut our military spending in half and use it for scientific and medical research.
I forgot how low the bar is for money to be well spent.