Thursday, September 25, 2008

Messenger Science In The News: Mysterious New 'Dark Flow' Discovered in Space

"As if the mysteries of dark matter and dark energy weren't vexing enough, another baffling cosmic puzzle has been discovered.

Patches of matter in the universe seem to be moving at very high speeds and in a uniform direction that can't be explained by any of the known gravitational forces in the observable universe. Astronomers are calling the phenomenon "dark flow."

Vexing, hah. The universe is approximately 14 billion years old. Earth has been around for 4.5 billion years, and life as we know it took hold here half a billion years ago.

Those from Rio Linda, stay with me now; given the known facts, there conceivably could be life forms 10 billion years older than our own. That's a helluva good start. Just think of the technological advances we've made in the past hundred years or thereabouts, and imagine, well, try to imagine what our own technology would look like after billions of years.

Can't do it. No one can. That's why we attribute certain phenomena as being "natural", and have such a difficult time figuring it out. Might be it isn't natural at all. Might be that those "pieces of matter" hurtling at high speeds towards a particular direction are in fact a super race or races kicking the pedal to the metal. For...

Who knows. The older parts of the universe are where the perplexing activities can be detected. Wait a while. They'll be here soon enough. Just hope they're vegetarians.

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