The Daily Galaxy is reporting that scientists have witnessed something as-yet unexplainable called 'Dark Flow'. Apparently, at the outer reaches of the galaxy, where matter is supposed to be heading out in all directions simultaneously, millions of stars are heading toward a single point, a cosmological "hot spot" (Luke McKinney).
It sounds pretty compellingly scary. In fact, so far it has baffled and flummoxed the scientists who discovered it:
The unexplained motion has hundreds of millions of stars dashing towards a certain part of the sky at over eight hundred kilometers per second. Not much speed in cosmic terms, but the preferred direction certainly is: most cosmological models have things moving in all directions equally at the extreme edges of the universe. Something that could make things aim for a specific spot on such a massive scale hasn't been imagined before. The scientists are keeping to the proven astrophysical strategy of calling anything they don't understand "dark", terming the odd motion a "dark flow".
Though we've sort of adopted a (sort of) unifying theory that is an amalgamation of string and supergravity theories, I wonder how this discovery complicates things. The article doesn't go into much depth as to what the Dark Flow might be (just about everything that is not explained is called Dark this or that, these days), nor does the article explain what I've mentioned, which is how it might complicate (and negate some of) the earlier theory.
Perhaps, and I have no idea what I'm talking about, it could be a P-Brane hovering so close to our universe that it is pulling matter toward it. Hmm. I'm no scientist, but it is an interesting concept. I'll try to keep an eye on this to see if there is anything new that comes out of it. Anyone have any thoughts?
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