Hungry Hyaena

I fly west to Seattle on Wednesday morning. The following week, I head south to San Francisco. I will return to NYC just before the middle of the month. I don't expect to be posting any new content while I am gone.

I leave you all with this profound tidbit, clipped from NewScientist magazine.

"In August, radio astronomers announced that they had found an enormous hole in the universe. Nearly a billion light years across, the void lies in the constellation Eridanus and has far fewer stars, gas and galaxies than usual. It is bigger than anyone imagined possible and is beyond the present understanding of cosmology. What could cause such a gaping hole? One team of physicists has a breathtaking explanation: 'It is the unmistakable imprint of another universe beyond the edge of our own,' says Laura Mersini-Houghton of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill."

The claim made by Mersini-Houghton is controversial, and totally without mathematical support. All the same, it seems to have turned a number of astrophysicist heads.

I find it oddly comforting that our universe might be pressed up against another, like a bowl of so many water balloons. After all, what are water balloons for?



Photo credit: "Calvin & Hobbes," by Bill Watterson