I honestly appreciate that we don't understand the universe. Theories keep evolving and that's what science should look like. If we can't question "established" scientific theories, we have abandoned the scientific method. Strong theories hold up. Like the theory of gravity, although even there I'm not convinced we have a complete understanding. Good answers are good, but who knows what we might be capable of if we keep pushing for more.
this post was submitted on 19 Mar 2025
346 points (85.2% liked)
Space
10065 readers
841 users here now
Share & discuss informative content on: Astrophysics, Cosmology, Space Exploration, Planetary Science and Astrobiology.
Rules
- Be respectful and inclusive.
- No harassment, hate speech, or trolling.
- Engage in constructive discussions.
- Share relevant content.
- Follow guidelines and moderators' instructions.
- Use appropriate language and tone.
- Report violations.
- Foster a continuous learning environment.
Picture of the Day
The Busy Center of the Lagoon Nebula
Related Communities
π Science
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
π Engineering
π Art and Photography
Other Cool Links
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
What did they drink?
Last few paragraphs...
Shamir noted that an alternative explanation for why most of the galaxies in the study rotate clockwise is that the Milky Wayβs rotational velocity is having an impact on the measurements.
βIf that is indeed the case, we will need to re-calibrate our distance measurements for the deep universe,β said Shamir.
"The re-calibration of distance measurements can also explain several other unsolved questions in cosmology such as the differences in the expansion rates of the universe and the large galaxies that according to the existing distance measurements are expected to be older than the universe itself.β
That's leading me to think that that's actually the more probable explanation, and the black hole idea comes in a distant second in terms of probability, but is much more attention grabbing/sensational/click-baity.
The black hole idea is actually weirdly solid, its a case of the maths says we definetaly should be but observation and just intuition says its crazy. If you consider the event horizon to be the surface of a volume, black holes get less dense as their radius increases, you can have a black hole with the same density as rock, water, air, even the miniscule density of the gas in a vacuum, so long as teh black hole is large enough. The average density of the observable universe is higher than the density of a black hole the size of the observable universe so technically we should be in one.
Technically this doesn't have to affect anything, larger black holes can have gentler gravity gradients and nothing in physics actually demands all the mass inside be concentrated at a miniscule central point, it just works out that way for black holes of the size we've seen so far. So the entire universe could be a black hole (assuming its finite) with the event horizon just being functionally inacessable and the black hole so large that internal conditions aren't really influenced in any way.
Surely at some point it stops being useful to apply the same terminology to such vastly different concepts. If the universe is a black hole and Sagittarius A* is a black hole then "black hole" doesn't communicate anything effectively outside of extremely niche astrophysics conversations.
The mass of the visible universe is apparently enough to make a black hole with an event horizon ten times larger than the visible universe's. I don't understand how that hasn't happened already, but apparently it just doesn't look like it's happened ("unless...").
It could totally have happened already and we just don't notice, though there's kind of a critical size where a black hole just gets infinitely big as adsorbing a stray hydrogen atom in the vacuum of space increases its radius enough to encompass multiple new hydrogen atoms and the whole thing just expands to encompass the entire universe. Kind of when everything is a black hole then nothing is a black hole sorta situation.
load more comments
(1 replies)
if you can call that living
Using data from Nasaβs James Webb Space Telescope, researchers at Kansas State University in the US discovered that the majority of the galaxies were rotating in the same direction.
This goes against previous assumptions that our universe is isotropic, meaning there should be an equal number of galaxies rotating clockwise and anticlockwise.
βIt is not clear what causes this to happen, but there are two primary possible explanations,β said Lior Shamir, associate professor of computer science at Kansas State University.
βOne explanation is that the universe was born rotating. That explanation agrees with theories such as black hole cosmology, which postulates that the entire universe is the interior of a black hole.β
yeah it's just the most headline grabbing possibility
Dude, after reading the paper from start to finish, this whole thing seems off.
- The guy's an associate professor of computer science and has no degree in cosmology, but he's talking about cosmological implications of these findings.
- Every single paper cited supporting his argument was written by himself (in exactly one case, it was written by himself and a coauthor). In total, Shamir cites himself ~~106~~ 130 times.
- Numerous other papers by numerous other authors (some mentioned by this paper in attempted rebuttals) using a variety of methodologies find this not to be the case.
- It violates the cosmological principle used by major and highly successful models of the universe.
- The way he performed this analysis was an algorithm which he wrote. When he cites papers that have used this algorithm, he only cites himself, indicating no other academic in the world has thought this algorithm is seriously useful for this application.
- When speaking to The Independent (which is of really middling quality), instead of speaking about the data itself and how he arrived at it, he (again with no formal background in cosmology) starts talking about the most clickbaity possible implications of this data.
It's totally possible Shamir is right and that there really is a massive bias. That would be extremely cool. However, he's published numerous papers on this over the last decade yet still seems to be the only one who agrees with it. Which to me is highly unusual.
This is what I missed on r/science. The thorough paper critique! Thank you so much!
Can I just say your thoroughness here is a real fucking impressive skill. Thank you for sharing.
This guy reads.
Thanks for breaking that down, I wish newspapers or even BBC News did this. They do now have BBC Verify but its never super clear of their findings, certainly not in the format that you've just used. Perhaps theirs should be called BBC Balance. The only thing I would say with regard to your first point is that I'm not against the idea that any individual could make a breakthrough. At least with regard to theory.
We already know that throughout the history of cosmology, whole experts have been wrong when a new discovery is made. E.g. Highly likely that not everyone believed that Earth was centre of the Universe (like the earlier science communities claimed). The issue with this guy is he's using his own biased ideas and data and some people believe whatever is printed in a newspaper must be right.
Only silver lining is at least there clickbaity headlines give the public something more substantial to think about for 60 seconds instead of what the next Kardashian is up to...
To be sure, I agree with your interpretation of your first point. I was establishing that as part of a pattern rather than an end-all "you can't do science without a degree in that field", especially since applied CS is monumentally important to every field. It's that lack of formal education in cosmology combined with a pattern of only citing oneself for support of one's arguments combined with this being a long-held and broadly successful assumption combined with numerous cosmologists using a variety of methodologies which they think are acceptable combined with no cosmologists choosing to use his algorithm combined with ostensibly using his time with The Independent talking almost exclusively about deep cosmological implications.*
* This last one could be The Independent's fault; it's technically possible Shamir talked their ear off about CS stuff and methodology and previous attempts and what he wants to do going forward but The Independent only ran with the juicy sfuff.
load more comments
(1 replies)
@[email protected] (moderator), can we have a rule about clickbait headlines.
Iβm kind of getting sick of these pop-science articles that exagerrate everything times 1000x in the headline. In any other discipline that kind of hyperbole would be considered a lie.
load more comments
(8 replies)
Chat is this real?
I recommend critically reading the paper. It is quite accessible to those with college-level science background.
Most importantly, it is still highly controversial whether this galaxy rotation direction bias actually exists. If you look at section 4 of the paper, the author is debating against different groups that did similar surveys and found no bias. Someone needs to actually work through this author's methodology as well as those of other groups and figure out what is going on.
If there is indeed a bias, that is super exciting! An anisotropic universe due to being in a black hole would be a very cool explanation. But given the ongoing debate, a general-audience publication like Independent presenting this rotation bias as a given fact is very poor journalism.
much larger universe than this? are you fucking kidding? we might just as well die then.
Or you might just as well live given the absurdity of it all.
You both make excellent points!
Pulls deeply on the cigarette, stomps it out and then waves the pistol's barrel towards a dark corner of the room.
"Now get into the box..."
eh why not ...
we might just as well die
Because it's not what you expected?
I can assure you, whatever you expected is just as strange and absurd as this.
Let me put this in another way:
To think that time might have not existed, then started up at some point, breaks my brain.
To think that time might go on for infinity in the past, with no starting point, also breaks my brain.
load more comments
(1 replies)
black holes all the way down?
The Frensh-German TV-Channel Arte published a Documentary about the theorem, that we are probably living in a black hole. According to them its based on the work of Nikodem Poplawski (mathematician and physicist). It was a kinda nice theory and seemed appealing. But Im no scientist and I have no idea about higher Math and Physics. Sadly, on the German Arte-TV-Site the video is not avaible anymore. (According to German Law public-TV-Channels arent allowed to keep their Videos up online unlimited) https://www.arte.tv/de/videos/101940-002-A/leben-wir-in-einem-schwarzen-loch/
But I assume there are other sources, probably even in other languages.
I've kinda thought that were some n-dimension universe getting sucked into an n-dimension black hole, and what happens as that universe crosses the event horizon is the big bang, the arrow of time. And all of the matter and forces that have them appearing to interact is just some beautiful n-dimension spaghettification.
The universe isn't expanding; all mafter within it is shrinking, being crushed. all matter appears to be accelerating further and further away because, well, it is. From our perspective.
Think of our whole universe as the most epic allegory of the cave possible.
I'll go back to ripping my bong now.
load more comments
(4 replies)
Hole
There's debate on the existence of singularities and certain shapes of the universe can give the impression of accelerating expansion
Well, they still have a mass (and some form of "size") iirc, that can expand as they absorb things
So it might be turtles all the way down?
Explains the warped timeline
the idea that the Big Bang was the beginning of the universe
I always thought this was the consensus, but turns out, it was just as far back as we can go where physics as we know it work. Not everyone claimed that nothing existed before.
nothing existed before
Thing is that there's no "before", because time itself started with the big bang. The questions to ask are: is there anything other than our universe, and does that even matter? If nothing can get in or out of our universe, then there's no way to prove the existence of anything outside of it and there's zero impact one way or another.
load more comments
(6 replies)
The way things are going, more like we got tossed in an endless trash can. I donβt blame the Vulcans.
Kurtzegat (spelling debatable) did a video on this almost a year ago in case anyone wants a 10ish minute simplified version
Bruh I'm just trying to get through the workday I don't need this on my mind!
view more: next βΊ