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Thread ID: 82372 2007-08-25 03:35:00 It's a Google Wide And Nearly A Google Deep SurferJoe46 (51) PC World Chat
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584426 2007-08-25 03:35:00 I heard Dr . Carl Sagan tell how/where/when the word Google was created .

He had asked his daughter "What is the largest number in the universe?"

She answered: "A Google" . . . and it became so . :cool:

With that in mind . . . I have to ask about the part that I have highlighted in RED in the C/P below . . . . pay attention, I will be asking questions later . . OK


Astronomers have stumbled upon a tremendous hole in the universe . That's got them scratching their heads about what's just not there . The cosmic blank spot has no stray stars, no galaxies, no sucking black holes, not even mysterious dark matter . It is 1 billion light years across of nothing . That's an expanse of nearly 6 billion trillion miles of emptiness, a University of Minnesota team announced Thursday .

Astronomers have known for many years that there are patches in the universe where nobody's home . In fact, one such place is practically a neighbor, a mere 2 million light years away . But what the Minnesota team discovered, using two different types of astronomical observations, is a void that's far bigger than scientists ever imagined .

"This is 1,000 times the volume of what we sort of expected to see in terms of a typical void," said Minnesota astronomy professor Lawrence Rudnick, author of the paper that will be published in Astrophysical Journal . "It's not clear that we have the right word yet . . . This is too much of a surprise . "

Rudnick was examining a sky survey from the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, which essentially takes radio pictures of a broad expanse of the universe . But one area of the universe had radio pictures indicating there was up to 45 percent less matter in that region, Rudnick said .

The rest of the matter in the radio pictures can be explained as stars and other cosmic structures between here and the void, which is about 5 to 10 billion light years away .

Rudnick then checked observations of cosmic microwave background radiation and found a cold spot . The only explanation, Rudnick said, is it's empty of matter .

It could also be a statistical freak of nature, but that's probably less likely than a giant void, said James Condon, an astronomer at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory . He wasn't part of Rudnick's team but is following up on the research .

"It looks like something to be taken seriously," said Brent Tully, a University of Hawaii astronomer who wasn't part of this research but studies the void closer to Earth .

Tully said astronomers may eventually find a few cosmic structures in the void, but it would still be nearly empty .

Holes in the universe probably occur when the gravity from areas with bigger mass pull matter from less dense areas, Tully said . After 13 billion years "they are losing out in the battle to where there are larger concentrations of matter," he said .

Retired NASA astronomer Steve Maran said of the discovery: "This is incredibly important for something where there is nothing to it . "

Here's my question:


Can a VOID be described as having VOLUME?

Sounds silly to me . . or we need another word for it by Dr . Sagan's daughter . . . . . . right?

I think the volume of a void is called a "Schnabbel" . 		SurferJoe46 (51)
584427 2007-08-25 05:51:00 It has anti-volume .

To put it another way: In reality it is nothing, but it is defined by that which contains it .

Sort of like Paris' latest hairdo I guess . :xmouth:

And the moral of the story is:

You too can have a haircut like mine without studying quantum physics . 		Shortcircuit (1666)
584428 2007-08-25 05:53:00 Nah.....way, way before Sagans' daughter, in fact try 1923, The Happiness Boys, otherwise know as Ernest Hare and Billy Jones sang about Barney Google.

www.jazz-on-line.com 		Terry Porritt (14)
584429 2007-08-25 05:56:00 Nah.....way, way before Sagans' daughter, in fact try 1923, The Happiness Boys, otherwise know as Ernest Hare and Billy Jones sang about Barney Google.

www.jazz-on-line.com

Ahh that's it!

Paris has a Barney on top :thumbs: 		Shortcircuit (1666)
584430 2007-08-25 10:33:00 Thanks Joe. Incidentally that "empty" void may still contain dark matter and dark energy - we just can't detect it.

And there is no such thing as "empty" space because vacuum energy causes virtual particles to pop in and out from moment to moment.

Apart from that, the lumpiness of the universe is a puzzle leftover from the Big Bang. We should expect to have an homogenous universe with all the particles spread evenly throughout. Instead there are clumps of matter (Planets, stars etc) with wide spaces in between which indicates some unbalancing effect in the original microsecond of everything.

Not as interesting as Youtube but something to ponder anyway. :D 		Winston001 (3612)
584431 2007-08-25 12:07:00 I think the number you're looking for is a "googol" rather than the ubiquitous interweb search engine with a name that sounds somewhat similar... :p ;) johcar (6283)
584432 2007-08-25 14:47:00 I think the number you're looking for is a "googol" rather than the ubiquitous interweb search engine with a name that sounds somewhat similar... :p ;)

Yeah...phonics are strange..but even my wife remembers Sagan saying that..in fact when I first started "Google-ing" things, she made the comment that she thought I was going to Sagan's Universe sites all the time and couldn't figger what my interest was there.

Ah..well!

That's how urban legends get started I guess. :p 		SurferJoe46 (51)
584433 2007-08-25 15:24:00 I heard Dr . Carl Sagan tell how/where/when the word Google was created .

He had asked his daughter "What is the largest number in the universe?"

She answered: "A Google" . . . and it became so . :cool:

Not true .

From the Wikipedia article on Google ( . wikipedia . org/wiki/Google" target="_blank">en . wikipedia . org):

The name "Google" originated from a misspelling of "googol,"[18][19] which refers to 10100 (the number represented by a 1 followed by one-hundred zeros) . Having found its way increasingly into everyday language, the verb, "google", was added to the Merriam Webster Collegiate Dictionary and the Oxford English Dictionary in 2006, meaning, "to use the Google search engine to obtain information on the Internet . ";

and the Wikipedia article on googol ( . wikipedia . org/wiki/Googol" target="_blank">en . wikipedia . org):

The term was coined in 1920 by nine-year-old Milton Sirotta (1911–1981), nephew of American mathematician Edward Kasner . 		vinref (6194)
584434 2007-08-25 15:48:00 Interesting-er and interesting-er it gets. SurferJoe46 (51)
584435 2007-08-25 22:36:00 The void is actually filled with anti-dark matter. This is the residue of the removal process whereby grey matter in multiple craniums (cranii?) is replaced by dark matter to enable them to enjoy iMacs. According to winmacguys prognostications, this should be expanding rapidly.

(In accordance with Apple's Corporate policy of being environmentally friendly, a prerequisite of being an iMac user is a low initial grey-matter count to avoid over consumption of dark matter.) 		R2x1 (4628)
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