And Speaking of Cosmic Horror…

This very detailed simulation of large scale structure was created as part of the Illustris simulation. The distribution of dark matter is shown in blue and the gas distribution in orange. This simulation is for the current state of the Universe and is centered on a massive galaxy cluster. The region shown is about 300 million light-years across.

Waitaminute. I thought in space no one was supposed to be able to hear you scream? My middle school Science teacher drilled it into the impressionable young minds of his students that, since there’s no atmosphere in space, there’s no sound. Thus all the explosions and laser blasts and sounds of the engines of spaceships we see, or hear, in STAR WARS and STAR TREK and literally every other space-set show or movie ever made, isn’t scientifically possible. Well, for one thing, that teacher was a jerk, anyway, and two, he can just go try to sell his lies to black hole at the heart of the Perseus Galaxy Cluster, 250 million light years from Earth!

Said NASA: “The popular misconception that there is no sound in space originates with the fact that most of space is essentially a vacuum, providing no medium for sound waves to propagate through. A galaxy cluster, on the other hand, has copious amounts of gas that envelop the hundreds or even thousands of galaxies within it, providing a medium for the sound waves to travel.” Boom! Mic drop!

Listen to the sounds the black hole makes right here. It’s creepy and haunting, but I find it strangely beautiful, too. (“You would!” says everybody who knows me.)

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Categorized as darkness

By The Evil Cheezman

Purveyor of sacred truths and purloined letters; literary acrobat; spiritual godson of Edgar Allan Poe, P.T. Barnum, and Ed Wood; WAYNE MILLER is the head architect of EVIL CHEEZ PRODUCTIONS, serving up the finest in entertainment and edification for the stage, the page, and the twain screens, silver and computer. He is the axe-murderer who once met Andy Griffith.

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