Hubble finds lonely 'void galaxy' floating in cosmic nothingness “In a galaxy far, far away” you don't see much, it seems. The image at the top (here for readers on mobile devices) is one of the latest shots retrieved from Hubble, and the galaxy that's front-and-centre is one of the loneliest ever snapped. It even has to suffer a dull, prosaic name: MCG+01-02-015. In spite of its apparent …
Always good to link to Millenium Simulation. Which is pretty old now, however. Or I am old. Or the universe is. Something.
Anyway, is there a richer, more glorious simulation out there?
As the Hubble organisation explains here, MCG+01-02-015 is so far away from the action that if Earth were inside looking out, we would not have discovered that the universe held other galaxies until the 1960s.
So does this mean that because the galaxy is millions/billions of light years away from other galaxies, it takes that long for the light from those galaxies to reach it? And in Earth's age terms, it would have taken until 1960 for the first light to reach??
Personally, I can't think of a better decade for it to arrive though...
And by a strange coincidence, the inhabitants of that galaxy DID first build telescopes that saw other galaxies during the 1960's. When they observed the splendor of the rest of the universe, their comment was "Well, it's all got to go, of course." The demolition fleets are now on their way and should arrive here in the next few thousand years. (Well, it's a big universe, and what makes you think OUR galaxy deserves such a high priority, anyway?)
Yes! I finally meet someone else who has read the Saga of the Exiles (and hopefully the counterpoint Galactic Milieu series as well!)
Every time I've tried to talk about those books in sci-fi forums, I inevitably get responses of "What saga is that?" and "Who the fuck is Julian May?" I can't believe that such brilliant books - that are supposed to be bestsellers to boot - seem be so unfamiliar to so many sci-fi fans.
I second your suggestion that it could be the Duat galaxy, since it is a barred spiral. Although Duat was supposed to be 240 million light years away, and I think this one is a bit further than that.
Anyway, thumbs up for the reference!
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So it seems likely that this is one of the first places that will becomes 'disconnected' with the rest of the universe as the metric expansion of space occurs. Since it's not closely gravitationally bound to any other galaxies everything will disappear sooner and they will truly be alone.
If you squint real hard at that galactic image you will see Zenu looking back at you bent over in uncontrollable laughter guffawing at the fools on this small 3rd rock so far away who actually believe in LRH's 'gift' of the cult of Suckertology. But wait... there's also something else... uh oh... wait a sec... there's definitely a disturbance in the David Miscavige force... someone has just escaped... yes... yes... it's true... why it's Leah Remini... and she's finally free after 30 years... and she's telling everyone what absolute BS it is! OH MY BODY-THETANS! Who will be next?
Could galaxies such as this be the missing mass that has fueled the dark matter debate? It's not missing at all, just too far away for us to know about? If we don't know about it, we can't add it into the calculations.
Just musing on a rainy Tuesday.... The universe is a wonderful thing to muse on.
Dark matter is an idea which has been invented to make our observations fit what we think gravity does. The problem I have with that is we don't really know much about gravity: https://xkcd.com/1489/ (remember to read the mouse-over text). So we are supposed to believe in magically invisible stuff? Yeah right. Dark matter may as well be lots of Russell's teapots.
> we don't really know much about gravity
Thta's just fucking bullshit pulled out of donkey arses. The Einstein Field Equations have not shown a single hole in about a century of application. I strongly suspect this will stay that way until someone comes up with a viable description of quantum gravity.
> So we are supposed to believe in magically invisible stuff?
So we are supposed to have magically different behaviour of gravity under nicely left-unstated conditions?
I don't see what the XKCD strip adds either. Especially as it shows the Newton equation. Feck off.
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