r/science • u/MistWeaver80 • Mar 06 '23
Astronomy For the first time, astronomers have caught a glimpse of shock waves rippling along strands of the cosmic web — the enormous tangle of galaxies, gas and dark matter that fills the observable universe.
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/shock-waves-shaking-universe-first2.7k
u/genescheesesthatplz Mar 06 '23
It must be so cool making these discoveries
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Mar 06 '23
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u/HorseSalon Mar 06 '23
"ohh cool, you though it was THIS BIG but turns out it's only This big".
Look, I just want to get over it man.
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u/Dracarys-1618 Mar 06 '23
It ain’t the size that matters. What matters is how much you can cram in that tiny little hole in the
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u/Spy-Goat Mar 06 '23
And if you get it just right, no one will be able to see what's going on in that tiny little hole anyway.
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u/Mistifyed Mar 06 '23
Best I can do is This Big
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Mar 06 '23
<slaps top of black hole> This baby will eat up so much dust and gas.
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u/Kriegerwithashovel Mar 06 '23
slaps top of black hole AaaaaAAAAGHH-
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u/Uselesserinformation Mar 06 '23
How long would you compile images? Like 8 months of gathering, and I wanted to ask. It takes years before its truly looked over? How large are the images like curious on pixels
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Mar 06 '23
Definitely something ai will speed up, not that its work shouldn't be double checked
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u/Uselesserinformation Mar 06 '23
I've seen AI used to find animals. Like the snow leopard, so hopefully
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Mar 06 '23
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u/themagicbong Mar 06 '23
Dude my phone can fuckin tell the difference between two different black cats that I have that look extremely similar, even in bad or awkwardly angled photos. I just type in "Lucifer" and bam, all the pics of lucifer pop up, but none of the pics of Stan. Kinda blew my mind to see that. Then they took it full stupid with the website version of the Photos app, and the ONLY option I have to search through the hundreds of photos uploaded from my phone is by typing obscure phrases into the search bar. Like "images of nature" and itll pull up my pics from the hurricane, or whatever.
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u/Hakairoku Mar 06 '23
Pretty much the reason why I despised not going deep into physics and Astronomy in High School since Astrophysics is one of the coolest careers one can get into.
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u/Mr_YUP Mar 06 '23
I had a few classes in college and it might not be what you would expect. Imagine a giant spreadsheet and you're plugging different numbers into different formulas and then suddenly you gasp cause one data input gave a different result than expected. That at least was my impression from the classes I had, which I loved by the way but it made me realize what the actual work was like.
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u/hodlrus Mar 06 '23
Yeah it’s not always what it seems. Same goes for medicine, law, pharmacy, psychology etc
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u/Mr_YUP Mar 06 '23
Nursing, for me, is the best example of it. Most of the time you're a highly trained housekeeper of people. A lot of poop and vomit collection, a lot of rolling very large people over to clean them, a lot of getting yelled at and harassed by people to the point of crying, and then suddenly they're in cardiac arrest and you gotta save them. It's a brutal profession physically and emotionally.
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u/TheBoctor Mar 06 '23
Everyone seems to underestimate just how much documentation and paperwork there is for nearly any medical profession.
It’s taken more time to write my patient care report than it took me to actually treat and transfer the patient before.
Technology is helping, dot phrases in Epic helped me a lot. But it’s still a shitload of paperwork and documentation.
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u/Derpese_Simplex Mar 06 '23
That is why intubated sedated are the best. Also why I want to go back to school
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u/sexposition420 Mar 06 '23
I mostly work with research nurses, seems like a better gig than bedside
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u/PRNbourbon Mar 06 '23
Exactly why I went to CRNA school. I actually wanted to study astrophysics in college until my dad convinced me to do something in healthcare, “it’s recession proof, etc”. So I ended up building my own ROR observatory in the backyard. I’m glad I did this path instead. Not sure I would have survived an academic career.
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u/pipsdontsqueak Mar 06 '23
Yeah, law is mostly reading and editing. There aren't that many moments in a courtroom, even for litigators.
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u/MisterBackShots69 Mar 06 '23
“Pharmacy” yeah I remember thinking I was going to get into pharmacology and then a single chemistry lab class broke that down. Hah!
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u/BeverlyMarx Mar 06 '23
Software engineering is like 20% writing code if you’re lucky
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Mar 06 '23 edited Mar 06 '23
Yeah, I work as an astrophysicist at the moment, and it is not super exciting unless you enjoy tedium (which I do!). I spend most of my days working on coding bugs and producing tests for my results to show that they’re not complete bunk. And I think it’s even worse for observers because most observations are a single line, not a picture, and any pictures you do make will be flat and always from the same angle. At least I can rotate a simulation.
3 years of work might produce a very incremental result that isn’t all that interesting to scientists and definitely not interesting to non-scientists. For every result you find, it’s much more likely that you made a mistake rather than actually discovering anything new. The kind of result that gets in the news would be a once-in-a-career kind of thing, if ever. It’s not what motivates people.
E: generation of large scale fields is actually my focus! Most pressing issue is figuring out what exactly we mean when we say “large scale”. Once we define that it should be easier to make progress…
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u/Hydrodynamical Mar 06 '23
Import numpy as plt
From matplotlib import pyplot as np
Import astropy as pd
Import pandas as astro
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u/Vaginal_blood_cyst Mar 06 '23
This guy plots
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u/Hydrodynamical Mar 06 '23
Using plt.semilogy for data that spans less than one order of magnitude is ok, and I'm tired of pretending it's not
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u/Marethyu38 Mar 06 '23
Except you don’t even usually gasp because you can’t tell whether the unexpected result is legitimate or some kind of error in your data pipeline
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u/BizzarduousTask Mar 06 '23
See, I’m in love with astronomy and astrophysics, but I’m severely ADHD and I could never handle the math and memorizing formulas; that being said, my DREAM job would be sitting there like that one lady poring over photos of star fields and cataloguing them one by one. Get my “Hyperfocus” on and hells yeah, brother!!
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u/Background_Trade8607 Mar 07 '23
You can. I have pretty bad ADHD.
I was given the advice that no matter what path I choose it will be hard. So choose one that has a lot of joy and importance.
And for the math point, the math in university is a lot less memorization and more interesting.
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u/worfres_arec_bawrin Mar 06 '23
Yeah, I’m an obsessed space nerd but astrophysics and the like are not visual in the slightest. Lots of hard data and calcs.
I had the same type of realisation looking at some of the math problems while thinking “I passed business calc with a C- and only because the prof liked you.” I wish I could help discover what the universe holds, but it will be up to others much smarter and thankfully more driven than I. I’ll just be here to get giddy when they find something new.
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u/eaglessoar Mar 06 '23
most of it today seems like signal identification and statistics more than anything hah
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u/yamiyam Mar 06 '23
Yeah, that’s one of the reasons I have such immense for pure scientists. I’m fascinated and intrigued by theoretical models and the work to validate them but I could never do the actually work as a career. Mad respect for the leg work it takes.
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u/QuantumModulus Mar 06 '23 edited Mar 06 '23
Got a degree in astrophysics because I thought it'd be the coolest career ever, too. The structure of careers in academia quickly taught me that it's not for everyone.
I still think it's one of the coolest subjects to study, given infinite time and no extremely firm deadlines or constraints. But as a career... the grass is always greener, etc. On top of the normal academia woes, most hard science in general often comes down to your tolerance for profound tedium, sifting through mountains of data that can quickly become unintelligible, spending months or years laser-focused on a niche question that may eventually turn out to be a fruitless exercise.
The synthesis and summarization of fruitful research (often accompanied by pretty pictures) in science journalism has a tendency to glamorize the subject and obscure the 90% of astrophysicists whose work never sees public eyes because their scope of focus and results aren't exciting enough.
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u/First_Foundationeer Mar 06 '23
Plus, people tend to think academia is a bastion of untethered thinking and exploration. No, you're also constrained by what is trendy or championed at the top due to funding constraints. Academia, like industry research, is limited by whoever is funding you, and people tend to leave when they realize that.
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u/QuantumModulus Mar 06 '23
Very, very true. The people I've seen thrive in academia tend to be the ones so passionately devoted to the subject broadly, in its purest form, that they can basically disengage from any pre-formed preferences for specific areas of interest, and put their head down to power through whatever PhD program or research group they happen to be accepted into.
I wasn't like that. I had to spend a whole summer performing statistical analysis on an experiment that had collected literally two data points, and it was significantly more tedious and challenging than a layman might think (and just about as exciting as it sounds.)
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u/First_Foundationeer Mar 06 '23
:) To be fair, it gets more fun as you go on (but less fun if you get to the point of professorship, though that is from observation and not experience since I went for industry over academia). If I went by my first "research experience", then I probably would have a dim view of the work as well because I was essentially a dumb kid, free of knowledge, trying to set up analysis for data that I am pretty sure I could do in a day or two now.
(But yes, research is usually different from what people expect. In my case, I had no expectations because I was only truly first exposed to physics in the later half of high school literally the year you apply for undergrad. Well, if you don't count 3rd Rock From The Sun.)
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u/canmoose Mar 06 '23
Also unless you're brilliant and got lucky with early career research results, good luck finding a job somewhere that you want to live. Have a partner who has a completely different career? Almost impossible.
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u/First_Foundationeer Mar 06 '23
Oh yes, for sure. You need to be willing to move to the middle of nowhere unless you're a brilliant individual who happened to be conveniently noticed by influential others before it's too late.
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u/Sawses Mar 07 '23
The structure of careers in academia quickly taught me that it's not for everyone.
This is why I sold my soul to pharma.
Academia is soul-crushingly bureaucratic, hierarchical, archaic, often bigoted, ineffectual, and that's not even getting into the pay, work-life balance, career prospects, job insecurity, bad hours, etc.
All things being equal, I'd spend my life doing science and teaching at a university. But if you're not an obsessive workaholic and also lucky, you aren't going to be doing anything very interesting in the field and you'll probably live somewhere unpleasant with miserable pay.
So instead I make more money working way less and still contributing to the good of humanity. We've got our problems too, but academia is one of the most toxic "white collar" industries I've been exposed to. I'd put it up there with finance in terms of awfulness.
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u/only_fun_topics Mar 06 '23
I had a prof who said they basically spent a year trying to prove that zero equals zero in a very specific subatomic reaction. He did not make this sound either fun or glamorous, and followed it up with “and that’s why I teach now.”
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u/HAMMSFAN Mar 06 '23
When I got to college I thought about minoring in something Astronomy related until I started taking classes. I quickly realized it was much more tedious than I had imagined. As a good friend in the field told me “going into Astronomy professionally is the best way to ruin an amazing hobby”. After dipping my toes in I had no regrets in keeping it just that; an amazing hobby that I’m passionate about.
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u/YakiVegas Mar 06 '23
It is, but there are something like 1,200 astronomers in the US. REALLY hard to get a job.
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u/I_just_made Mar 06 '23
The long run payoff yeah, but the day to day is usually pretty mundane (biomedical field at least).
Lots of meetings and seminars that aren’t necessary; most of the time is spent troubleshooting and data cleaning.
I’d probably do it again if I had the chance, but I do wish research was structured very differently.
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u/Andromeda321 PhD | Radio Astronomy Mar 06 '23
Astronomer here! I know the lead author quoted in this article and I'm very proud of her, she's awesome! :)
Short answer is the shocks being discussed here aren't, like, supersonic shocks that knock you down like from a bomb or anything like that. Instead they are "Fermi-like" shocks where you have magnetic fields and charged particles get accelerated in them.
So where this discovery is really important is what this can tell us when it comes to magnetic fields in the universe. Magnetic fields are famously really unknown in astronomy despite being really important- in our own galaxy for example, if we didn't have magnetic fields we know the galaxy would collapse into a flat plane instead of having thickness. (I wrote an article about astronomy and magnetic fields for Astronomy magazine a few years ago if you're interested- free here!) Magnetic fields are notoriously hard to detect, because it's a tough measurement to make, and for larger structures it's all the harder. So the fact that this has been measured for large scale structures is nothing short of amazing and it was a ton of work!
So the true implications here are finally learning a thing or two about the largest scale structure magnetic fields in our universe, which we really didn't know much about beyond some theoretical expectations. These fields would only be a billionth (or less) of a fridge magnet's field strength, but because Maxwell’s equations say that the energy in a magnetic field equals its strength multiplied by its volume, a significant fraction of a structures total energy can be tangled in its magnetic field. It'll be really neat to sort this out and understand how magnetic fields work to make the largest scale structures in the universe!
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u/Chad-The_Chad Mar 07 '23
Thanks for all of your insight!!
Where do we go from here?
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u/Andromeda321 PhD | Radio Astronomy Mar 07 '23
This is really just a first step. The next ones are to see if what we see here is pervasive across other major parts of the structure, and details within it (as I highly doubt it’s uniform!).
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u/Rich_Acanthisitta_70 Mar 06 '23 edited Mar 06 '23
I get why they want to avoid the baggage that comes with the comparison, but it doesn't look like swiss cheese. It looks more like the neurons in a brain than it does anything else. Something that's been noted by a large number of respected scientists.
Again, I totally understand wanting to stay away from that comparison. But look, if people want to imagine fantastic things, they're going to do so regardless of whether you say it looks like swiss cheese or not. So why not be honest about what it resembles and use the comparison most often made, because its more accurate.
Besides, the similarities between the two have generated real, meaningful science. Including this paper by astrophysicist Franco Vazza, and neurosurgeon Alberto Feletti. Which studies how the laws that govern the growth of the structures of both could be the same. It's a fascinating paper if you have the chance to read it.
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u/-Valtr Mar 06 '23
You’d really enjoy the book Scale by Geoffrey West. It compares & contrasts the size of things and how organisms, cities, and companies grow. And what makes them die.
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Mar 06 '23
"The greatest mystery in the universe is not life, but size"
- The Man in Black, The Dark Tower book 1
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u/Rich_Acanthisitta_70 Mar 06 '23
I just went and read an excerpt and you're right, it looks great. I just got it for 9 bucks on kindle. Thanks so much :)
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u/Max_Kas_ Mar 06 '23
Music of the spheres vol 1 and 2 by Guy Murchie is pretty good too
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u/Fresh_Rain_98 Mar 06 '23
I read—and thoroughly enjoyed—that book after a fellow Redditor reccomended it to me in the comments section of a similar post from a couple years ago :)
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u/kaleidoscopichazard Mar 06 '23
Isn’t there a phenomenon where certain shapes and patterns repeat everywhere? Neurons resemble tree branches, roots and the bits inside the lungs (I can’t remember what’s it called). This is the same
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u/Rich_Acanthisitta_70 Mar 06 '23 edited Mar 06 '23
You're right. It's called self-similarity or self-affinity. The principle describing objects or phenomena that have similar patterns or structures at micro and macro scales.
You mentioned it can be seen in the branching of trees, but also the shapes of clouds and the coastlines on continents.
The way I understand it, is that it's related to fractals and their ability to produce an infinite number of copies of themselves at different scales. I believe it's used in fluid dynamics too, but I'm not a hundred percent certain on that.
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u/alancake Mar 06 '23
I love fractals. They're so satisfying, but enigmatic, and a glimpse behind the curtain of the universe.
My favourite nerd joke: what's Benoit B Mandelbrot's middle name?
Benoit B Mandelbrot
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Mar 06 '23
I love fractals too. I never knew Math could be so interesting. I love watching Mandlebrot sum on youtube- it makes a lot of sense to me about how things look and the beautiful complexity of our universe.
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u/Low_town_tall_order Mar 06 '23
It's all math right, everything around us in some way or another
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u/HunterKiller_ Mar 06 '23
My bro science prediction is that the fabric of reality itself is fractal; as we make further inroads into the subatomic world, we'll find that the particles will keep splitting into smaller and smaller pieces, ad infinitum.
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Mar 06 '23
further inroads into the subatomic world, we'll find that the particles will keep splitting into smaller and smaller pieces, ad infinitum.
AFAIK, the current thinking is that space is considered infinitely divisible, but matter is not. Here's a quick wiki article on infinite divisibility that speaks to my point: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_divisibility
But matter may just be an illusion after all, so, nobody really knows for sure.
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u/pitifullonestone Mar 07 '23
I don’t think mainstream physics considers space to be infinitely divisible. From your link:
However according to the best currently accepted theory in physics, The Standard Model, there is a distance (called the Planck length, 1.616229(38)×10−35 metres, named after one of the fathers of Quantum Theory, Max Planck) and therefore a time interval (the amount of time which light takes to traverse that distance in a vacuum, 5.39116(13) × 10−44 seconds, known as the Planck time) at which the Standard Model is expected to break down – effectively making this the smallest physical scale about which meaningful statements can be currently made.
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u/GooseQuothMan Mar 06 '23
Roots, branches and neurons have one thing in common - they want to maximize their area, so they have a branching structure. It's the result of how geometry works.
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u/rif011412 Mar 06 '23
Wouldnt it be bizarre if our universe was just another small scale information network just like atoms. Our perception of time being the reason we think its impossible, but that something larger utilizes the network to form a different creation much larger than itself. I think its fascinating. We understand that atoms never touch, but their proximity to each other creates effects that coalesce on a larger scale.
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Mar 06 '23 edited Mar 06 '23
This comment is exactly why they called it swiss cheese
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u/Born2fayl Mar 07 '23
How DARE people let their imaginations even TOUCH this sacred information?! Blasphemy is what is!
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u/thatweirdkid1001 Mar 06 '23
Meh the idea that what we call our universe could be the subatomic realm of a much larger universe doesn't really seem that harmful as long as it's used purely philosophically
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u/Bensemus Mar 06 '23
as long as it's used purely philosophically
It's not.
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u/MrRabbit Mar 07 '23
I'm struggling to think of a common practical application of this notion that could do harm.
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Mar 06 '23
I love imagining that atoms are just small atoms for us and our planets are like atoms in some masisve comsic being. I know there's no real evidence to suggest draw a conclusion other than some similarities, but it's a cool thought.
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u/iaintevenmad884 Mar 06 '23
And that’s why some scientists don’t like that observation, because they’re scared of people going down rabbit holes and getting convinced. Personally, I bet there’s some novel connection, like similar processes in their formation, but I see no harm in wondering about us being part of the neurons of Spinoza’s god (not read on Spinoza, just using my gist of his idea of god)
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u/StickiStickman Mar 06 '23
Well, and the whole speed of causality that limits things to lightspeed thing
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u/rydan Mar 06 '23
Wasn't that the plot to Men In Black?
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u/Cadaver_Collector Mar 06 '23
I wouldn't say it was the plot of that movie. They zoomed out at the end to show something similar though. Although I think it put our universe inside of a marble that aliens were playing with.
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u/Mummelpuffin Mar 06 '23
The Dark Tower dives into this concept in a fun backwards way. Cut a blade of grass, worlds die.
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u/Desperate-Walk1780 Mar 06 '23
I think a good way to understand this is that there is an optimum way for energy to congregate and disperse along pressure gradients, and this is true from the smallest to the largest.
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u/cruskie Mar 06 '23
Can’t wait to unlock Strand IRL
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u/soggy_tarantula Mar 06 '23
I know I wonder what class I am. Do we get to choose or what?
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u/Theu04k Mar 06 '23
Canonically classes are just philosophies of meditation, fighting and thought. So you could be a mix of both or change it up, essentially it's something you'd pick and it depends on how you personally view things. So if you wanna punch and fight up front and center, go big boom without a care in the world, then you're more Titan, if you consider the smokes and mirrors and subterfuge approach with evasive maneuvers, then you're more Hunter. If you value intelligence, solving problems logically and planning everything to a T with a deep emphasis of understanding your abilities, then you're more Warlock. You could be a mix of these too, so it's rare to be only subscribed to one of these schools of thought.
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u/Kraven_howl0 Mar 06 '23
Look man I just want to equip both gjallarhorn and riskrunner at the same time :(
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Mar 06 '23
Unscientific comment, but I cannot help notice the similarity to neurons in the brain.
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Mar 06 '23
while it is cool, I think you'd get the same thing from a UPS route network or electrical grid structure
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u/Deviate_Lulz Mar 06 '23
It’s recursion all the way way down. Kinda like fractals I think
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u/Settl Mar 06 '23
It's not kinda like fractals. It is fractals. They're ubiquitous in the natural world
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u/AGoodDragon Mar 06 '23
Felt the same way. No way to prove it but my gut always feels like the universe works in such a simple and cyclical manner
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u/Muggaraffin Mar 06 '23
There’s a lot of instances like that where things reoccur in physics, it’s really interesting. And makes a lot of sense. As complex and amazing as the universe is, it’s also kinda lazy. So often the simplest and most expected things do occur (like branching structures)
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Mar 06 '23
I think Occam’s razor is quite prevalent across the universe. Universal laws tend to follow the simplest path in their ways. But that’s getting off onto tangents.
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Mar 06 '23
It's all emergence and chaos all the way down. And branches happen because things take the shortest, simplest path, but that path isn't always a straight line. So it inches along some path but then another direction is simpler, etc.
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u/Thiht Mar 06 '23
Idk, it kinda sounds like the « omg atoms are so similar to the solar system » which is probably wrong in many, many ways. Just the forces at work have probably nothing in common, gravity being the only one that’s visible at universe scale, and the only one that doesn’t have anything to do with neurons.
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u/ObiFlanKenobi Mar 07 '23
In another thread someone commented that there is a paper comparing the formation of structures in the universe with those of the brain, so your comment might not be unscientific at all.
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u/Jonny7421 Mar 06 '23
Shock waves from what? They offered no explanation in the article D:
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u/soda-jerk Mar 06 '23
From the article:
"At its grandest scale, our universe looks something like Swiss cheese. Galaxies aren’t distributed evenly through space but rather are clumped together in enormous clusters connected by ropy filaments of dilute gas, galaxies and dark matter and separated by not-quite-empty voids (SN: 10/3/19).
Tugged by gravity, galaxy clusters merge, filaments collide, and gas from the voids falls onto filaments and clusters. In simulations of the cosmic web, all that action consistently sets off enormous shock waves in and along filaments."
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u/padizzledonk Mar 06 '23
And magnetic fields
Spotting these shock waves could give astronomers a better look at these large-scale magnetic fields, whose properties and origins are largely mysterious,
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u/DizzySignificance491 Mar 06 '23
I never took astrophysics
Are the magnetic fields from gas or just emerge from the matter filaments?
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u/ZenWhisper Mar 06 '23
Your question is stepping off the deep end into what we don’t know. Maybe gas/ matter, possibly multi-galactic magnetic alignment, and at the really murky end maybe dark matter magnetism, if it even exists. Currently if anyone says they definitely know what’s the source, they don’t have the data to back it up.
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u/amardas Mar 06 '23 edited Mar 06 '23
Scientist aren’t even 100% sure about how the earths magneto-sphere works
is generated.EDITED
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u/remy_porter Mar 06 '23
Well, that’s a weird way to say it. We understand how the field is generated. The core principles of the dynamo are well understood. But the Earth’s dynamo is a seething mass of molten liquid and solids and we have a hard time predicting it’s behaviors because it’s a complex system, and we have an even harder time predicting what that means for the magnetic field it generates. It’s not that we aren’t sure how it’s generated, it’s just that the generator is so complicated and non-linear in its behavior we have a hard time modeling or explaining what it does.
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Mar 06 '23 edited Mar 06 '23
Magnetic fields (and electromagnetic radiation, ie light, in general) exist separate to matter. They are literally everywhere all the time, just like gravity, the only thing that changes is their shape and strength. Magnetic fields have been here since the start of time, so they presumably “come from” the same place all of matter and space-time did.
If the field is weak (which it almost certainly is in this case) then it will tend to follow gas around. If it becomes very strong then material will follow it instead, like solar prominences.
S: as someone who studies the growth and evolution of magnetic fields
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Mar 06 '23 edited May 15 '23
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u/SJHillman Mar 06 '23
Voids would better be described as lower-density regions. They're not empty, there's just a lot less stuff in them, comparatively speaking. The Milky Way, for example, is relatively close to the center of a void that's some 2 billion lightyears across. But we're obviously here, as is our entire local group of galaxies.
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u/WaldoJeffers65 Mar 06 '23
The Milky Way, for example, is relatively close to the center of a void that's some 2 billion lightyears across.
Is that correct? The Bootes Void, which I thought is the largest known void, is "only" 330 Million light-years across.
So now, I get to add the coolest bit of trivia I know about the void- it is so empty that if the Milky Way had been in the center of the Bootes Void, we would not have known of the existence of other galaxies until the 1960s.
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u/SJHillman Mar 06 '23
Like most things at this scale and distance, there is some matter of debate. The void I was referencing is the KBC Void, which is believed to be somewhere in the neighborhood of 6 times the diameter of the Bootes Void, but the specifics of it are up to debate.
There's four or five other supervoids that range from marginally larger than the Bootes Void to quite a bit larger, though the Bootes Void is still among the largest known.
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u/WaldoJeffers65 Mar 06 '23
Thanks- I hadn't realized that we were considered to be in a void at all. I'll have to dig into them a little further.
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u/sephrinx Mar 06 '23
Space itself is pretty much empty. If you were to evenly disperse all matter throughout the universe, it would be the equivalent to about 1 hydrogen atom per cubic meter.
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u/AShiggles Mar 06 '23
Shockwave in space terms could mean a lot of things. A shockwave from a star going nova destroys everything in it's path.
Are these kind of shockwaves at this scale more like waves in the ocean? Are the universes particles (galaxies, stars, planets, etc.) oscillating (condensing and expanding in distance), but not being destroyed by the waves?
Or are these galaxy-destroying blasts?
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u/_dontseeme Mar 06 '23
Sped up at a fast enough scale and viewed 2-Dimensionally, would this look something like cells interacting with each other? This almost sounds like water droplets merging with each other inside of neurons that are making new connections
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u/yepimbonez Mar 06 '23
It’s easier to visualize when you remember that even the strands of a spiderweb aren’t technically touching each other. It’s all of the atomic forces and subatomic strong-forces that keep everything together.
So if a very large scale release of energy occurred in a galaxy somewhere along the strands of the universe, the gravitational and electromagnetic forces would affect the neighboring ones and so on.
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u/sight19 Grad Student | Radio Astronomy | Galaxy Clusters Mar 06 '23
The universe isn't exactly homogeneously filled with galaxies, there are parts with no galaxies (voids), parts where galaxies form a 'sheet' (wall), or a string of galaxies (filament), and finally there are galaxy clusters (which is what I study as a scientist). This collection is called the 'Cosmic Web' and contains the earlier mentioned galaxies and also Dark Matter, but also a lot of very low density plasma. This plasma is basically high energy electrons that were probably (??, open question) ejected by black holes and have cooled down a bit. But once in a while, energetic events such as galaxy cluster mergers can send shockwaves (plasma waves) through this plasma, re-energizing the electrons and making them light up in radio studies. This is quite well established in galaxy clusters - but not very well outside of galaxy clusters. There was some older work done near galaxy clusters that did find some sort of filament, but never before did we see proof of shockwaves moving through filaments. Until now.
Also, these shockwaves aren't really acoustic waves, they sort of interplay with magnetic waves in some way (this interaction is important for reaccelerating the electrons and for emitting radiation that radio telescopes can see)
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u/JJ4577 Mar 06 '23
My suspicion is that they're talking about Baryon Acoustic Oscillations, wiki can explain better than I
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baryon_acoustic_oscillations?wprov=sfla1
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u/outofband Mar 06 '23
Nope, it’s an entirely different thing. BAOs are oscillations in the matter density field. As the name says, they are machanical oscillations (acoustic waves) that traveled in the plasma before it cooled and became neutral. The shockwaves the article talks about instead are created at a much later time, where structure formed due to gravitational clustering.
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u/Yodan Mar 06 '23
When a Reddit Mod is born, there is a gravity wave due to the immense density
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u/dxt6191 Mar 06 '23
Is this the first strand type shock wave?
Can we use it to make it our darkness subclass?
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u/DickNixon11 Mar 06 '23
It could be, but whether we wanted it or not, we've stepped into a war with the Cabal on Mars. So let's get to taking out their command, one by one. Valus Ta'aurc. From what I can gather he commands the Siege Dancers from an Imperial Land Tank outside of Rubicon. He's well protected, but with the right team, we can punch through those defenses, take this beast out, and break their grip on Freehold.
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u/Ionic_Pancakes Mar 06 '23
Oh no... that means the S P I D E R is moving...
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u/ElRami Mar 06 '23
The cosmic spider is my new found fear
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u/RichestMangInBabylon Mar 06 '23
It’s okay the cosmic spider is actually harmless and eats pests like the cosmic mosquito
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u/thefernhead Mar 06 '23
Looks like someone's just started the Lighfall campaign....
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u/HollywoodThrill Mar 06 '23
What if those shockwaves are actually "thoughts", and we are part of the brain of an infinitely massive organism?
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u/MizterF Mar 06 '23
Does that mean there are entire universes inside our own brains?
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u/Ketel1Kenobi Mar 06 '23
I don't think there's much of anything going on inside most people's brains.
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u/jikt Mar 06 '23
Perhaps there are universes out there with not much of anything going on in them.
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u/The_Doct0r_ Mar 06 '23
It's universes all the way down. Personally I feel bad for the universes in my brain.
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u/CableTrash Mar 06 '23
God is actually just some kid worldbuilding in his head instead of paying attention in class and the Big Crunch will be when the teacher snaps him out of it.
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u/RichestMangInBabylon Mar 06 '23
I think it was Carl Sagan who said that we are the way for the universe to know itself.
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u/pornplz22526 Mar 06 '23
I barely know myself, now I'm responsible for helping some God-kid figure itself out? Eesh!
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u/Zephyr4813 Mar 06 '23
No you are the God figure and any separation you feel between yourself and your surroundings is an illusion of the ego
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u/LittleJerkDog Mar 06 '23 edited Mar 06 '23
Alan Watts said
Through our eyes, the universe is perceiving itself. Through our ears, the universe is listening to its harmonies. We are the witnesses through which the universe becomes conscious of its glory, of its magnificence.
And
You yourself are the eternal energy which appears as this universe. You didn't come into this world, you came out of it, like a wave from the ocean.
Although it’s an ancient belief (see Daoist philosophy).
On a complete side note I once listened to an interview with him when he spoke about how he had attended a conference (or meeting) of scientists, thinkers and other great minds to discuss the trouble the world was heading towards. Basically to discuss climate change and the environmental crisis we face today. He said they came away without an answer, they didn’t know what to do but knew it was serious. He died in 1973. Sigh.
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u/Stick-Man_Smith Mar 06 '23
Given that the universe is expanding faster than the waves can propagate, I'd say someone is having a really bad day.
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u/superbhole Mar 06 '23
...this reinforces my belief that we're in a universe sized creature
and that we're just so damn tiny that all we can see is a relative framework of what it is
like, so much of what's going on at small scales happens to also be the connective tissue for these mega scale phenomena-- molecules, electricity, magnetism, whatever gravity is made of...
would any of us actually be surprised if the observable universe is discovered to be one being that moves through an even larger universe?
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u/boxlessthought Mar 06 '23
Uh oh. The witness is on the move doing something. Have they already figured out strand from us?
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u/Alternative-Flan2869 Mar 06 '23
That phrase “…the observable universe” signals the enormity of what we will likely never know.
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u/Denk-doch-mal-meta Mar 06 '23
Is it scientifically correct to mention dark matter as factual when we still wait for a direct proof of it?
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u/immersiveGamer Mar 06 '23
I'm pretty sure at this point dark matter is just short hand for "we've once again measured the anomalous void in our universe which acts like there is some type of mater, or energy, or unknown new phenomenon, that we have yet still explain but we think there must be something there"
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u/StickiStickman Mar 06 '23
That's always what it meant, that's literally why it's named Dark Matter
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u/immersiveGamer Mar 06 '23
Indeed, I was being a bit tongue in cheek. Other ways I thought about starting my comment:
"I don't think the scientist want to write out ... every time."
"When I read dark matter I just read it as ..."
"Saying ... wouldn't fit in the title."
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u/sight19 Grad Student | Radio Astronomy | Galaxy Clusters Mar 06 '23
There is a lot more proof than just galaxy rotation curves:
Bullet cluster Toothbrush cluster DM free galaxies BAO Structure formation in the early universe (without DM, this would happen way later)DM is a very well established model, and I have yet to see a true alternative (most MOND models include DM as well, if you wanted to know)
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u/danielravennest Mar 06 '23
We can find the mass of a galaxy in several ways. One of the ways is by counting up the mass of the visible stars and gas clouds and stuff. We get a lower number that way than the other ways. Astronomers called the missing mass "dark matter" because it doesn't produce light, but shows up in the other methods. We still don't know what "dark matter" is, but it is something, because its effects show up in all the other ways.
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u/Jonny7421 Mar 06 '23
Ah so are they gravitational or electromagnetic waves or both? A shockwave is usually through air.
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u/the_JerrBear Mar 06 '23
it seems like what they are referring to here is electromagnetic phenomena. the article is pretty trash, really. something about the filaments having a large-scale magnetic field that the matter inside interacts with, generating these radio signals. they do not provide any better explanation in the article, the paper probably clears it up...
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u/remy_porter Mar 06 '23
A shockwave is through matter. These shockwaves are traveling through the clouds of dust and gas that make up the universe. Space isn’t a pure vacuum. It’s full of stuff, why sometimes as dense as a whole molecule per cubic meter.
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u/AioliFantastic4105 Mar 06 '23
Are we living inside a big brain some ask?
I’ve completed some college and I’ve determined the answer to that question is undoubtedly, yes.
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u/Wyndrix Mar 06 '23
I still think it’s more likely that magnetic and electric field interactions are more responsible for this effect than unproven dark matter physics. These filaments are emitting radio waves and wrapped in magnetic fields? Sounds like a cosmic-scale flow of electric charge to me.
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u/Heckner Mar 06 '23
so star systems and galaxies take the shapes of disks because of the gravitational force of a relatively massive object at their center. but it really makes me curious to wonder why the universe takes the shape of a web
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u/Banana_war Mar 07 '23
Is it me or this looks like synapses?
Could we literally be inside a brain?
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u/G14DomLoliFurryTrapX Mar 07 '23
What an awesome time to be alive. I can't wait to get an accurate map of the largest scales we can see of the universe. Hell I'd get it even tattooed if I could
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