There is a good possibility for interesting science in the field of astrophysics and the closely related field of physical cosmology. It seems that something exists that couldn’t possibly exist under current theories: a structure of quasars that extends to distances which seem far greater than possible under current understandings of the expansion of this universe along with the abstract nature of spacetime as well as mass-energy-fields. (I assume the distances stretch beyond those of cause-and-effect relationships under current models of the expanding universe.)
The article at Biggest Thing in Universe Found—Defies Scientific Theory discusses this finding which is potentially fruitful if it be as disturbing to our understandings as it first seems.
Talk about a whopper—astronomers have discovered a structure in the universe so large that modern cosmological theory says it should not exist, a new study says.
…
Astronomers have known for years that quasars can form immense clusters that stretch to more than 700 million light-years across, said Clowes. But the epic size of this group of 73 quasars, sitting about 9 billion light-years away, has left them scratching their heads.
That’s because current astrophysical models appear to show that the upper size limit for cosmic structures should be no more than 1.2 billion light years.
“So this represents a challenge to our current understanding and now creates a mystery—rather than solves one,” Clowes said. (…)
The titanic structure, known simply as the Large Quasar Group (LQG), also appears to break the rules of a widely accepted cosmological principle, which says that the universe would look pretty much uniform when observed at the largest scales.
“It could mean that our mathematical description of the universe has been oversimplified-and that would represent a serious difficulty and a serious increase in complexity,” Clowes said.
[Quotes attributed to “study leader Roger Clowes, an astronomer at University of Central Lancashire in England.”]
There are two major qualifications which any reader should bear in mind. First, these interesting results might disappear with further research or analysis. The seeming anomaly might prove to be easily explainable with a relatively modest modification to current understandings. Probably not but, in any case, I’m hoping that these researchers have discovered something interesting because that leads to fruitful periods of struggling to re-understand the universe or what it contains.
Secondly, I am most certainly not implying even the possibility of mystical or magical forces but am speculating these researchers might have found pointers to some higher-level, `abstract’ principle of physics which can lead to more profound understandings of the universe itself, not just the universe as an ensemble of what it contains.
The universe is itself an entity and not just the sum of its contents. I’ll provide a quote I’ve used before in the essay, A Universe is More than it Contains:
We see that the faster decrease of [the radiation density of a relativistic universe modeled as a gas] compared to the mass density of a nonrelativistic gas is the result of the pressure work done by the expanding radiation. However, since the volume of the universe varies as [the third power of the expansion factor of the universe], the net radiation energy in a closed [and expanding] universe decreases as [the inverse of the expansion factor of the universe] as the universe expands. Where does the lost energy go? Since there is no pressure gradient in the homogeneously distributed radiation, the pressure does not act to accelerate the expansion of the universe. (The active gravitational mass due to the pressure has the opposite effect, slowing the rate of expansion…) The resolution of this apparent paradox is that while energy conservation is a good local concept…and can be defined more generally in the special case of an isolated system in asymptotically flat space, there is not a general global energy conservation law in general relativity theory. [Principles of Physical Cosmology, P.J.E. Peebles, Princeton University Press, 1993, page 139.]
I’m not proposing answers and I’d say that even the most solid answers we now have will be shown as doubtful before long. The first and second clauses of the prior sentence are closely related.
What we need, what we no longer have from Christianity and can’t possibly have from a properly disciplined physics, or any other strictly empirical science, is an overall understanding of Creation, as we Christians would say. That greater understanding, whether Christian or other, comes from acts of imagination as much as acts of analytical understanding of empirical knowledge. It’s the authoring of a story which corresponds as well as possible to the true story which is this world, the universe seen in a purposeful light, whether the light of the God of Moses or the Triune God of Jesus Christ or the principle of rationality which was Einstein’s Old One. Still more wondrously, Christians or others who see God as a true Creator can see Creation in all its realms from this realm of concrete, thing-like being through various realms of abstraction right on to the raw stuff of Creation which corresponds to the truths God manifested as sufficient and proper for the stories He tells.
To a Christian, physics and evolutionary biology and all other `purely’ empirical sciences should be used, must be used, in this effort to achieve a greater understanding but those empirical sciences can’t by themselves produce anything corresponding to a greater understanding. At the very least, a faith in the all-powerfulness of rationality or some other idea of necessary order is required, a faith I think to be beyond the capabilities of even the greatest of modern pagan thinkers (such as Nietzsche and Sartre and Einstein).
The goal for a modern philosophical or theological thinker is to find a narrative line, one which presents us with interesting and meaningful questions as much as, perhaps more than, answers. For now, with all the decay of the West largely attributable to the decay of the Christian intellect, empirical scientists and others have inherited enough of an overall understanding of that which they might not call Creation but with which they can work half-blinded, guiding themselves through the process of exploring created being and putting it into some sort of a meaningful context and asking good questions when new discoveries are in conflict with existing understandings. (See Intelligence vs. Intellect for a discussion of intellect as communal and capitalized live intelligence.)