Newfound Blob is Biggest Thing in the Universe

Space.com ^ | 27 July 2006 | Ker Than

[RosieCotton]

Coffee | nose

Owie...

[Fiji Hill]

Beware of the Blob!
It creeps, and leaps, and glides and slides across the floor,
Right through the door, and all around the wall.
A splotch, a blotch, be careful of the Blob!

Burt Bacharach, 1958

[HighWheeler]

LOL!


(check my tagline)

[Excuse_My_Bellicosity]

Great pic. Ted is so drunk he's not even trying to negotiate the cones and yellow tape. He's just got his bloodshot eyes locked on his car in the parking lot. He probably dragged the cones and yellow tape clear to his beach house.

[RightWhale]

A caller to the Art Bell Show last night stated that hydrogen is the smallest atom. This is not strictly true. In fact hydrogen is one of the largest. It is the one with least mass, however.

[true_blue_texican]

"Something this large and this dense would have been rare in the early universe,"

I think impossible would be the correct adjective. I've never understood how an explosion blowing everything away from its origin can cause some of the things being blown away to be blown together.

I've yet to see a Pizza Parlor be blown into existence by a suicide bomber!

[Iscool]

what kind of gas

Ya, leaded or unleaded??? Maybe it's got some potential...

[onedoug]

The universe designed for discovery.

Guillermo Gonzalez & Jay W Richards, The Privileged Planet

[oldbill]

In fact hydrogen is one of the largest.

Really!! Weren't paying attention in chemistry class, were you?

[RightWhale]

They didn't give you the real info in chem class.

[RightWhale]

I've never understood how an explosion blowing everything away from its origin can cause some of the things being blown away to be blown together

All this structure was merely quantum irregularity in the primordial blob, which was smaller than a single hydrogen atom to start with. Now these blobs are millions of light years across: hardly to be thought of as being blown together.

[RightWhale]

Looks like we don't do science very well anymore on FR.

[wyattearp]

In fact hydrogen is one of the largest. [atoms]

It has an atomic radius of 37pm. The only one smaller is He, with an atomic radius of 31pm, everything else is larger. Oxygen, for example, has a radius of 73pm. I don't know what you are using to determine that it is the largest.

[true_blue_texican]

All this structure was merely quantum irregularity in the primordial blob,

There can be no "irregularities" if you start with a singularity. That is why I do not believe in the Big Bang. If the BB created space there could have been no "blob" prior to the BB. The expanding universe that the BB assumes is a singularity expanding into "creation". I infer that my body is expanding (and not just from my diet ;-) in a like manner. I'm not a "creationist". But I don't buy the BB either.

[RightWhale]

It wasn't a singularity. It weighed twenty pounds and was very small. It had quantum irregularities that inflation magnified a bazillion times in a small part of a second.

[RadioAstronomer]

Looks like we don't do science very well anymore on FR.

No kidding. Any thread about astronomy now "must" (is it in the bylaws?) have the obligatory pics of Moore and Kennedy - just waiting for the Uranus joke.

[RadioAstronomer]

Start here. Good stuff:

http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~wright/cosmology_faq.html#BBevidence

[RadioAstronomer]

Thanks for the ping my friend.

Intersting article, stupid thread.

[RightWhale]

They say that science education in the US has fallen to twelfth place or so in the world. I wouldn't doubt it. There were complaints even in England that they were closing physics departments in English public schools, but it is happening here, too. It's a symptom.

[RadioAstronomer]

Welcome to the world of feel good education, extreme whacko environmentalism, no kid left behind (dumb down education to the smallest denominator - I had personal experience with this one), teach only "fun stuff", science and math are too hard, and so on.