Scientific Bewilderment

[Steve]

I do like reading the news. I find it amazingly disturbing most days to the point of insanity, but today there was a new story on bbc.co.uk/news which left me astonished.

Astrologers have found a 1 billion lightyear wide void of nothing (i.e. does not contain normal matter like our solar system and also does not contain dark matter (which is apparently the opposite of normal matter except no one can see it (useful stuff I imagine for sexy clothing)).

So, congratulations to those astrologers for finding this huge area of nothing. It does leave me in somewhat bewilderment how something that is so obviously fucking massive was not spotted previously. I mean, a billion lightyears is not exactly the size of a set of car keys is it!

I can imagine if you took an astrologer to a football match, after the match is over and everyone is leaving they would suddenly exclaim "wow, look at that down there, there is a large area of grass".

So, congratulations also to the astrologers for probably being on a really high paid wage for doing something so obviously pointless. The billion lighyear void is around 6-10 billion lightyears away, so its not like we are going to be packing our suitcases and enjoying a rather boring holiday there anytime soon. I think that in any respectable aliens guidebook the human race would be described as "a living form that enjoys spinning around and around on the surface a small world consisting of air, water and violence. Not a recommended place to visit unless you like paying tax and being mugged".

However, it is probably feasible to say that an astrologers job is slightly more rewarding than that of a statistician. Statisticians being though interesting people that inform us that "The lead found in the Chinese paint on selected Mattel toys, if put all together would allow us to create a ladder made of lead which would reach the moon". Well, thank you for that interesting fact, now prove it by building the damn ladder okay!.

Anyway, in conclusion, this rather massive void which astrologers claim contains nothing is infact impossible. There is no damn way on earth does that void not contain at least 10 spam emails.

Steve

[sbando]

Mind-boggling, isn't it?

Not strictly connected, but very funny, and also bewildering once you get the joke, it's this tee by the Geek Overlords.

[Steve]

Cool Tee Shirt. I was aware of the quantum uncertainty principal in that if you know the position of an element you do not know how fast its travelling, or you can know how fast its travelling or not know where it is. God help the guy who guesses both and gets it right, he will be ostracised.

I was also told that it is possible for a human to pass through a solid object in quantum theory as the molecules of your body could theoretically be in the same alignment as that of the wall allowing you to pass straight thru. I tried three times, it bloody hurt and decided that I am obviously, very definitely, unaligned

Another theory is white light and that an object that is so small would generate a white light effect which could pass through anything. This actual obstacle I believe will soon occur in computer processors given that the actual size of each transistor will soon be in the potential white light range. White light could effectively allow processors to communicate with each other without cables or a motherboard (so I was told). Not only that, but your frag rate and fps on Unreal Tournament 3 should be somewhat improved... So Quantum Physics is useful as it helps you to do head shots and get more godlikes... damn sweet!

[svin_renigoth]

I found out about that yesterday; it was a video, but i couldn't see the full story because of my shitty bandwidth here I am very interested in astronomy, and I would liked to have seen the coverage of that.
I see that the astronomers are calling it the Eridanus Supervoid. There are other intergalactic supervoids, but this is the largest and most distant ever discovered...
It probably took years of observation from (I would imagine) semi-automated systems at the VLA to notice that gap in radio transmissions, since this supervoid is so very far away. Supposedly its existence, from what little information I've read about it, will challenge some of the existing theories about the creation and expansion of the universe... but don't ask me how... still, quite interesting, at least to me

I'm trying to think of a way to tie this into porn.. like maybe an astronomically-sized gape...