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Bad Astronomy
« Ulysses’s odyssey comes to an end
Did life here begin out there? »

Aliens build a galaxy!

Back in 2004, European astronomers announced evidence of a tremendously distant galaxy, discovered only because its light was magnified and brightened by a gravitational lens. If this pans out (it appears that it’s still unconfirmed) it would be the most distant galaxy ever detected, a numbing 13.2 billion light years away.

Being rational, I didn’t realize is how much cooler this news really is: it’s actually evidence of a vast alien civilization artificially engineering galaxies!

I have no idea how I missed this.

I mean, it’s so obvious:

Intervention was needed by the Type IV civilization that created the big bang in their massive inter-universe particle colliders. The big bang created a black hole in the hyperspace – our universe with three spatial dimensions and a forward moving single time dimension. According to scientists this was the start of ‘dark ages’ that was eventually corrected through the intervention of the Type IV civilization.

Hmmm, "according to scientists", it says. I’m really sorry the article didn’t give their names. I sure would like to talk with them! C’mon, if they know about black holes in hyperspace then I would love to chat with them over a few drinks. Or a few hundred, maybe. After reading that whole article I doubt I have many brain cells left to kill anyway.

Tip o’ the tin foil beanie to Fark and the dozen or two BABloggees who sent this to me.

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February 26th, 2008 1:00 PM by Phil Plait in Antiscience, Humor, Science, Skepticism | 39 comments | RSS feed | Trackback >

39 Responses to “Aliens build a galaxy!”

  1. 1.   Chip Says:
    February 26th, 2008 at 1:18 pm

    “…According to scientists this was the start of ‘dark ages’ that was eventually corrected through the intervention of the Type IV civilization…”

    So its all political after all. The early Universe just after the “big bang” was co-opted by a clique of conservative business interests for its oil, plunging it into a stagnant dark age but later a progressive civilization of type IV liberals were able to wrestle it away and launch it into a forward thinking realm of three spacial dimensions. Except for a few minor stagnant areas that occasionally crop up in American political parties.

  2. 2.   Dan Says:
    February 26th, 2008 at 1:24 pm

    Was it the mice?

  3. 3.   Wayne H Says:
    February 26th, 2008 at 1:24 pm

    13.2 billion years *ago* is not 13.2 billion light years away. Co-moving co-ordinates and all.

  4. 4.   Michelle Says:
    February 26th, 2008 at 1:39 pm

    “Type IV civilization that created the big bang in their massive inter-universe particle colliders”

    …I think I’m not bright (read: crazy) enough to understand what the hell they’re talking about.

  5. 5.   Greg Says:
    February 26th, 2008 at 1:41 pm

    Makes perfect sense to me.

  6. 6.   yy2bggggs Says:
    February 26th, 2008 at 1:51 pm

    You’re making fun of it, but I really don’t see the problem here. The galaxy was too complex, and created too soon, to be of natural origin, so it is therefore evidence of intelligent design.

    I mean, this is just a straightforward application of ID science, right? And you said ID didn’t make predictions.

    (Might I point out again, I am not making fun of this).

  7. 7.   Daniel Fischer Says:
    February 26th, 2008 at 1:58 pm

    Wanna read a real paper about ideas like this? Check out Macroengineering in the Galactic Context: A New Agenda for Astrobiology …

  8. 8.   Daniel Fischer Says:
    February 26th, 2008 at 2:07 pm

    Looking further around the Indian website you also find articles on “many micro level UFOs and Unidentified Submerged Objects (USOs) that hover our atmosphere and under ocean water of extraterrestrial origin. These micro UFOs and USOs forms the basis of collecting information on our earth for the advanced extraterrestrial civilizations.” Phil, I start to wonder about your sources …

  9. 9.   SF Reader Says:
    February 26th, 2008 at 2:11 pm

    Gee, no proclamations that all brown dwarfs are Dyson spheres?

  10. 10.   wisnij Says:
    February 26th, 2008 at 2:22 pm

    Pretty much every article listed at http://www.indiadaily.com/editorial/tech_default.asp is hilarious for one reason or another.

  11. 11.   Astronomy Pictures - Images of moon Says:
    February 26th, 2008 at 2:27 pm

    [...] Aliens build a galaxy! By The Bad Astronomer Being rational, I didn’t realize is how much cooler this news really is: it’s actually evidence of a vast alien civilization artificially engineering galaxies! I have no idea how I missed this. I mean, it’s so obvious: … Bad Astronomy Blog – http://www.badastronomy.com/bablog [...]

  12. 12.   Ian Says:
    February 26th, 2008 at 2:35 pm

    I can’t tell whether they seriously believe this stuff or they’re just trying to make scientists look like morons…

  13. 13.   L Yeomans Says:
    February 26th, 2008 at 2:39 pm

    1630 hrs EST 26 Feb 08
    BA–
    I have always enjyed your Web postings, and nowdays your Blog.
    BUT– today the website has been running a “script” that “slows down” Internet Explorer very much. (A factor of 10 to 20 times !!!)
    I will have to stop coming to your Blog until this problem is removed.
    I will try every few days, for at least two weeks, before I give up permanently.
    Again– I think you have a VERY GOOD Blog– but this is a “showstopper” !!
    Lou Yeomans

  14. 14.   Tom Marking Says:
    February 26th, 2008 at 2:41 pm

    The Type IV being referred to appears to be on the Kardashev Scale:

    Type 1 – 1.0E16 watts
    Type 2 – 1.0E26 watts
    Type 3 – 1.0E36 watts
    Type 4 – 1.0E46 watts

    1.0E46 watts is only one type II supernova per second. C’mon guys. You can do better than that. You need at least a Type 6 civilization to create the universe.

  15. 15.   Jason Adams Says:
    February 26th, 2008 at 2:47 pm

    Why can’t the gravitational lens be of alien construction instead? And instead of pointing to a real galaxy, it’s pointing to a big TV set. Galaxy of Our Lives has been running for 13.2 billion seasons and counting and is watched in over 6,000 galactic clusters.

  16. 16.   H mapes Says:
    February 26th, 2008 at 2:55 pm

    Hmmm…maybe we can get some Scientologists to CLEAR this up.

  17. 17.   Michael Lonergan Says:
    February 26th, 2008 at 3:04 pm

    Home! That’s my home! I always wondered where I was from, now I know.

  18. 18.   Jeffersonian Says:
    February 26th, 2008 at 3:35 pm

    @L Yeomans-
    Not sure everyone’s experiencing this problem; makes me think the problems is on your end either at your server or on your client.
    Issues to check:
    -first and foremost, go get Firefox or Opera; likely problem solved
    -problem at your server
    -problem at your firewall
    -compatability problem with your OS/hardware
    -script virus! Download spybot or equivalent
    Maybe not, but possible!

  19. 19.   ioresult Says:
    February 26th, 2008 at 3:37 pm

    Why belittle such an amazing discovery with petty squabbles over an obvious prank?

  20. 20.   Jeffersonian Says:
    February 26th, 2008 at 3:37 pm

    oops,
    here are URLS again:
    http://www.safer-networking.org
    http://www.opera.com
    http://www.mozilla.com/firefox

  21. 21.   RobertW Says:
    February 26th, 2008 at 3:40 pm

    Interesting! This guy is gets around.

    Each of our authors got a photocopied letter from him after our Nature paper on GRB041219a. We had some real laughs over it when we got it.

    And heads up Phil! His return address is near us in Denver!!!!

  22. 22.   EdSG Says:
    February 26th, 2008 at 3:41 pm

    At least I hope they *DO* have flying cars; here we’ve been tricked by scientist :-(

  23. 23.   Davidlpf Says:
    February 26th, 2008 at 4:30 pm

    (shaking head)
    amazed the electric universe guys are not here claiming it was plasma electric fields making such an advance galaxy so early.

  24. 24.   CJArmstrong Says:
    February 26th, 2008 at 5:00 pm

    Actually it was plasma electric fields that were employed to create…

    …oh, right…Davidlpf beat me to it. ;)

  25. 25.   LarrySDonald Says:
    February 26th, 2008 at 6:14 pm

    My immediate thought was that “Contact” was ment as fiction.

  26. 26.   Zacfunk Says:
    February 26th, 2008 at 7:29 pm

    As much as the article is tripe, you can’t deny that Asimov’s short story “The Last Question” is still a good one.

  27. 27.   antaresrichard Says:
    February 26th, 2008 at 7:35 pm

    When you’ve just tweaked yourself a universe, it’s time to break out the Pan Galactic Gargle Blasters. Forget the lemon slice! Real mice do without it.

  28. 28.   Lugosi Says:
    February 26th, 2008 at 8:39 pm

    And in this other galaxy, alien astronomers are looking in their telescopes and saying, “Hey, there’s a galaxy located 13.2 billion light years from us that looks like it was intelligently designed by a Type IV civilization.”

  29. 29.   trebuchet Says:
    February 26th, 2008 at 8:48 pm

    antaresrichard: “As much as the article is tripe, you can’t deny that Asimov’s short story “The Last Question” is still a good one.”

    It’s probably my all time favorite. Pretty old, though. I wonder how many others around here have read it. “And AC said….”

  30. 30.   Sergeant Zim Says:
    February 26th, 2008 at 9:51 pm

    Dr. Asimov said in an interview that “The Last Question” generated more mail (both posiive and negative) than all the rest of his work combined.

    You can imagine the tone and the sources of the negative mail he got…

    Heinlien released “Starship Troopers” and “Stranger in a Strange Land” in the same year. He got more negative mail over “ST” and more positive mail over “SiaSL” (mostly from ‘hippies’, some of whom would show up at his home, demanding to “share water” with him, uninvited) than all other work.

  31. 31.   Sergeant Zim Says:
    February 26th, 2008 at 9:53 pm

    On anothe note, I was wondering where the writers for the “Weakly Whirled Snooze” had gotten to after their paper went out of business – - now I know – they went to India.

  32. 32.   Quiet Desperation Says:
    February 27th, 2008 at 1:29 am

    On anothe note, I was wondering where the writers for the “Weakly Whirled Snooze” had gotten to after their paper went out of busines

    Some appear to have gone to the New York Times. ;-) Honestly, what happened to that paper?

  33. 33.   Regner Trampedach Says:
    February 27th, 2008 at 2:00 am

    Great fun, Phil!
    It seems, though, that everybody here misinterpreted the sentence
    “According to scientists this was the start of ‘dark ages’…” – which
    was most surely the intention of the “Indian Daily”‘s “journalists”.
    If you stop where my quote stops, they are very correct. The time
    just after the Big Bang was dark – lots of neutral gas which is efficient
    in blocking light. As the first stars came along, they ionized the gas
    around them and evetually these ionized bubbles merged and the
    Universe was transparent – just as it is today. That was the end of the
    dark age.
    Conclusion: They are not lying about what science has taught us, but
    there are employing spin, worthy of the White House.
    Cheers, Regner Trampedach

  34. 34.   Chip Says:
    February 27th, 2008 at 2:04 am

    My informal newspaper survey:

    Most intelligent writing in USA – New York Times – especially the arts section. (Rush Limbaugh listeners and others lacking in critical thinking tend to hate it and can’t get past the editorial pages.) :D

    Dullest in USA – Wall Street Journal.

    Most informative on Middle East news (according to Seymour Hersh) – Haaretz

    Among the best online – Salon.com

    Possibly least amount of mistakes in science news for a non-scientific journal – Los Angeles Times and New York Times.

  35. 35.   GSC Says:
    February 27th, 2008 at 10:42 am

    Hi people

    I read this daily but this is my first post at BAB so forgive me if i am doing anything wrong.
    I think the people that wrote the article might be referring to ideas and theories that are studied by Michio Kaku, is it ok to post a link?
    if so: http://www.mkaku.org/
    I have read his book called “Parallel Worlds” and in the end of the book he writes about the type I to V civilizations and what they could do in terms of energy use, a type iV could use the energy of a galaxy and create “big bangs” and so on….nice read but take this read with a bit of opened mind : )
    Mr. bad astronomer i am sure would LOVE his ideas about science and god….but if you skip this “details” the book is pretty good read.
    Best regards from Lisbon
    G.

  36. 36.   Eric Says:
    February 27th, 2008 at 12:37 pm

    Ok, I am going to say that India Daily just has their own little World Weekly News section, and this article must have come from it. I mean the writing isn’t quite as good as the articles about BatBoy, but it is a start.

  37. 37.   themadlolscientist Says:
    February 27th, 2008 at 4:25 pm

    A long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far away……..

    @ Dan: What was the name of the guy who wanted to put fjords on Africa?

  38. 38.   Buzz Parsec Says:
    February 27th, 2008 at 5:59 pm

    Slartibartfast. Yes, really.

  39. 39.   sean d Says:
    March 9th, 2008 at 12:41 am

    noooo I did it with my quantotempral transporter

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