CAPSLOCKSTUCK
Spaced Out Lunar Tick
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| System Name | Party On |
|---|---|
| Processor | Xeon w 3520 |
| Motherboard | DFI Lanparty |
| Cooling | Big tower thing |
| Memory | 6 gb Ballistix Tracer |
| Video Card(s) | HD 7970 |
| Case | a plank of wood |
| Audio Device(s) | seperate amp and 6 big speakers |
| Power Supply | Corsair |
| Mouse | cheap |
| Keyboard | under going restoration |
@qubit
A team of astronomers say they’ve discovered what might be the largest structure in the observable universe. The tremendous feature consists of nine gamma-ray bursts (GRB), forming a ring that is streaking across some 5 billion light years through space, according to a paper published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
The ring’s diameter stretches more than 70 times that of the full moon as seen from Earth. And, as the GRBs each appear to be about 7 billion light years away, the probability that these features are positioned in this way by chance is just one in 20,000, according to lead author Professor Lajos Balazs from the Konkoly Observatory in Budapest.
However it seems to undermine our established understanding of how the universe developed.
According to the cosmological principle, the structure of the universe is uniform at its largest scale and its largest structures are theoretically limited to 1.2 billion light years across. This new discovery pushes that limit nearly five-fold.
An image of the distribution of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) on the sky at a distance of 7 billion light years, centred on the newly discovered ring. The positions of the GRBs are marked by blue dots and the Milky Way is shown for reference, running from left to right
“If the ring represents a real spatial structure, then it has to be seen nearly face-on because of the small variations of GRB distances around the object’s centre,” Balazs said in a press release from the Royal Astronomical Society. “The ring could though instead be a projection of a sphere, where the GRBs all occurred within a 250 million year period, a short timescale compared with the age of the universe.”
Balazs and his team used telescopes in space and observatories on Earth to identify the structure. They will now investigate whether the cosmological principle and other processes of galaxy formation can account for the ring structure. If not, theories about the formation of the cosmos may need to be rewritten.
“If we are right,” he adds, “this structure contradicts the current models of the universe. It was a huge surprise to find something this big – and we still don’t quite understand how it came to exist at all.”
They suggest astronomers may need to radically revise their theories of the evolution of the cosmos
WHAT ARE GAMMA-RAY BURSTS?
Gamma-ray bursts are the most powerful explosions the universe has seen since the Big Bang.
They occur around once per day and are brief, but intense, flashes of gamma radiation.
They come from all directions and last from milliseconds to a few hundred seconds.
Recent evidence from recent satellites like Swift and Fermi indicate that the energy behind a gamma-ray burst comes from the collapse of matter into a black hole.
What is known, however, is that their huge luminosity helps astronomers to map out the location of distant galaxies, something the team exploited to find the structure.
A team of astronomers say they’ve discovered what might be the largest structure in the observable universe. The tremendous feature consists of nine gamma-ray bursts (GRB), forming a ring that is streaking across some 5 billion light years through space, according to a paper published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
The ring’s diameter stretches more than 70 times that of the full moon as seen from Earth. And, as the GRBs each appear to be about 7 billion light years away, the probability that these features are positioned in this way by chance is just one in 20,000, according to lead author Professor Lajos Balazs from the Konkoly Observatory in Budapest.
However it seems to undermine our established understanding of how the universe developed.
According to the cosmological principle, the structure of the universe is uniform at its largest scale and its largest structures are theoretically limited to 1.2 billion light years across. This new discovery pushes that limit nearly five-fold.
An image of the distribution of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) on the sky at a distance of 7 billion light years, centred on the newly discovered ring. The positions of the GRBs are marked by blue dots and the Milky Way is shown for reference, running from left to right
“If the ring represents a real spatial structure, then it has to be seen nearly face-on because of the small variations of GRB distances around the object’s centre,” Balazs said in a press release from the Royal Astronomical Society. “The ring could though instead be a projection of a sphere, where the GRBs all occurred within a 250 million year period, a short timescale compared with the age of the universe.”
Balazs and his team used telescopes in space and observatories on Earth to identify the structure. They will now investigate whether the cosmological principle and other processes of galaxy formation can account for the ring structure. If not, theories about the formation of the cosmos may need to be rewritten.
“If we are right,” he adds, “this structure contradicts the current models of the universe. It was a huge surprise to find something this big – and we still don’t quite understand how it came to exist at all.”
They suggest astronomers may need to radically revise their theories of the evolution of the cosmos
WHAT ARE GAMMA-RAY BURSTS?
Gamma-ray bursts are the most powerful explosions the universe has seen since the Big Bang.
They occur around once per day and are brief, but intense, flashes of gamma radiation.
They come from all directions and last from milliseconds to a few hundred seconds.
Recent evidence from recent satellites like Swift and Fermi indicate that the energy behind a gamma-ray burst comes from the collapse of matter into a black hole.
What is known, however, is that their huge luminosity helps astronomers to map out the location of distant galaxies, something the team exploited to find the structure.
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