Hubble Spots Anomaly; Borg Fu? Warp Drive? or a Big Ol’ Smudge?
September 17th, 2008 by 
Morgan J. Locke
 
Here is something fun. Sky and Telescope reports that the Hubble has spotted an unidentified object out in the far reaches of space.
What’s its distance? That would certainly be a first step to figuring it out, but only the broadest constraints can be put on its distance. Its lack of parallax motion means that it can’t be closer than about 130 light-years, and a lack of cosmic hydrogen absorption in its spectrum means that it can’t be farther than 11 billion light-years (when “distance” is defined by light travel time). That leaves a lot of leeway.
Wasn’t it our very own Sean who was speculating that all we need to do to attract the attention of the transdimensional gods is to muck around with, say, 5% of the known universe? Or was it Stuart? (I know, I know — that dot is a lot less than 5%. But it sure sounds interesting) (via Gizmodo)
Posted in Look up!, Morgan, Science, Space | 
7 Comments »
September 19th, 2008 at 11:48 am
Okay, since nobody else has the guts to say it…
We are apparently living in a much cheesier SF scenario than I thought. It seemed as if we were living in a John Brunner kind of future and now?
I’m hoping that it’s some kind of munitions construct in a Stephen Baxter-style intracosmic war zone because the only alternative I can think of is that the danged thing’s Galactus.
Of course I shouldn’t say things like this when I get all ferklempt if someone insists that animals had to be designed but astronomy keep throwing out these phenomena that seem like artifacts at first glance.
Oh, if only there were someone around here who was willing to engage in wild speculation about really, really big construction projects…
September 20th, 2008 at 8:24 am
Yay! A comment!
The Brainiacs have all gone awol (I hope, temporarily), and it’s been feeling a bit like Legend in here, lately.
I totally want this to be something bizarro and cool that helps astrophysicists see the universe in a different light. (“light” — get it? har har. Ahem.)
September 20th, 2008 at 10:01 am
To be honest I danced around leaving a comment for a couple of days partially because I wasn’t sure I really had anything to say…
If this does turn out to be an alien artifact all I want to know about is the funding. That’s my answer to Fermi’s Paradox (which I respect about as much as Pascal’s Wager) — funding.
Got to say, space is getting soo (vulgarity) weird these days. Our knowledge is no longer something I can wrap my noggin around.
And that’s how I like it.
September 21st, 2008 at 10:57 am
Same here. I’m reading Feynman’s QED right now, and man, it’s all so damn weird.
September 22nd, 2008 at 8:07 am
Here is another weird tidbit for you – the 1934 internet.
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=2a1_1221941168
September 23rd, 2008 at 9:16 pm
Stan, thanks for the link. I’m traveling right now and my crapazoid laptop doesn’t do audio — I’ll definitely check out your link when I get back.
October 15th, 2008 at 10:14 pm
Stan, I finally remembered to check out the 1934 Internet. Wild! I want to blog it.