homehome Home chatchat Notifications


Dark flow leads researchers to exotic conclusion

Two years ago, researchers reported the strange movement of hundreds of galaxy clusters moving in the same direction at about 3.6 million kilometers per hour. Current spatial movement models can’t explain this in any way, so at the time, they launched a strange hypothesis: clusters are being tugged by the gravity of something outside our […]

Mihai Andrei
March 25, 2010 @ 10:52 am

share Share

coma

The Coma Galaxy, a galaxy directly involved in the so called dark flow

Two years ago, researchers reported the strange movement of hundreds of galaxy clusters moving in the same direction at about 3.6 million kilometers per hour. Current spatial movement models can’t explain this in any way, so at the time, they launched a strange hypothesis: clusters are being tugged by the gravity of something outside our universe. Just take a minute to imagine that; on the outskirts of creation, unseen unthinkable …objects (for the lack of a better word) drawing huge chunks of our universe. Of course such structures would be fundamentally different from anything we know, and accepting this idea would basically mean rewriting a big part of everything we know about modern physics; so the idea was dropped.

However, this dark flow has been reported once again, way further away than the first time: more than 2.5 billion light-years from Earth. This time, the team had the advantage of 2 years of processing data and tracking galaxies so the conclusion was more obvious this time.

“We clearly see the flow, we clearly see it pointing in the same direction,” said study leader Alexander Kashlinsky, an astrophysicist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. “It looks like a very coherent flow.”

The find seems to support the idea that significant parts of matter were pushed outside of our universe right after the Big Bang, backing the multiverse theory up. Either way, dark flow is definitely one of the most interesting phenomena we’ve come across, and probably researchers are going to struggle to explain it for decades to come.

share Share

When Ice Gets Bent, It Sparks: A Surprising Source of Electricity in Nature’s Coldest Corners

Ice isn't as passive as it looks.

We can still easily get AI to say all sorts of dangerous things

Jailbreaking an AI is still an easy task.

A small, portable test could revolutionize how we diagnose Alzheimer's

A passive EEG scan could spot memory loss before symptoms begin to show.

Scientists Solved a Key Mystery Regarding the Evolution of Life on Earth

A new study brings scientists closer to uncovering how life began on Earth.

Astronomers May Have Discovered The First Rocky Earth-Like World With An Atmosphere, Just 41 Light Years Out

Astronomers may have discovered the first rocky planet with 'air' where life could exist.

Mars Seems to Have a Hot, Solid Core and That's Surprisingly Earth-Like

Using a unique approach to observing marsquakes, researchers propose a structure for Mars' core.

Humans made wild animals smaller and domestic animals bigger. But not all of them

Why are goats and sheep so different?

Could AI and venom help us fight antibiotic resistance?

Scientists used AI to mine animal venom for potent new antibiotics.

They're 80,000 Years Old and No One Knows Who Made Them. Are These the World's Oldest Arrowheads?

Stone tips found in Uzbekistan could rewrite the history of bows and arrows.

This Chihuahua Munched on a Bunch of Cocaine (and Fentanyl) and Lived to Tell the Tale

This almost-tragic event could have a very useful side.