06 JUL 2012 by ideonexus
The Bootes Void
In the course of a redshift survey of galaxies brighter than R approximately equal to 16.3, 133 redshifts were measured in three fields, each separated by roughly 35 deg from the other two. If the galaxies in these fields were distributed uniformly, the combination of a galaxian luminosity function and the magnitude limits predicts that the distribution of redshifts should peak near 15,000 km/s. In fact, only one galaxy of the 133 was observed with a redshift in the 6000 km/s interval centere...An inconceivably massive region of space extremely sparsely populated with galaxies, strangely spherical in shape.
18 MAY 2011 by ideonexus
Natural Laws are Universal
...the order of the Universe is not an
assumption; it's an observed fact. We detect the light from distant
quasars only because the laws of electromagnetism are the same
ten billion light years away as here. The spectra of those quasars
are recognizable only because the same chemical elements are
present there as here, and because the same laws of quantum
mechanics apply. The motion of galaxies around one another
follows familiar Newtonian gravity. Gravitational lenses and
binary pulsar spin-...The laws of nature are comprehensible and the same across the Universe.