Cosmic 'dark flow' detected across billions of light years

ScienceDaily (Sep. 24, 2008) — Using data from NASA's Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP), scientists have identified an unexpected motion in distant galaxy clusters. The cause, they suggest, is the gravitational attraction of matter that lies beyond the observable universe.

"The clusters show a small but measurable velocity that is independent of the universe's expansion and does not change as distances increase," says lead researcher Alexander Kashlinsky at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "We never expected to find anything like this."

Kashlinsky calls this collective motion a "dark flow" in the vein of more familiar cosmological mysteries: dark energy and dark matter. "The distribution of matter in the observed universe cannot account for this motion," he says.

~ Full article here ~

Putting The Warp Into Warp Drive

Putting the Warp into Warp Drive

Richard K Obousy and Gerald Cleaver

Baylor University, Waco, Texas, 76706, USA

Received. 12 July 2008 Last updated. 15 July 2008

Abstract: Over the last decade, there has been a respectable level of scientific interest regarding the concept of a warp drive. This is a hypothetical propulsion device that could theoretically circumvent the traditional limitations of special relativity which restricts spacecraft to sub-light velocities. Any breakthrough in this field would revolutionize space exploration and open the doorway to interstellar travel. This article discusses a novel approach to generating the warp bubble necessary for such propulsion; the mathematical details of this theory are discussed in an article published in the Journal of the British Interpanetary Society. The theory is based on some of the exciting predictions coming out of string theory and it is the aim of this article to introduce the warp drive idea from a non-mathematical perspective that should be accessible to a wide range of readers.

Categories. physics.pop-ph

Subject. Popular Physics

Comment. 11 pages, 6 figures

Journal-ref. Spaceflight, Vol 50, No.4, April 2008 Download full text here (PDF, 305KB)