Forget global warming. Now we have cosmic warming. Probably caused by those pesky CO2 clouds everyone knows permeate intergalactic space. The truth will eventually come out: billions of years ago, semi-intelligent aliens motored around outer space with internal combustion engines.
Quasars fingered for cosmic climate change
CLIMATE change doesn’t just happen on Earth. Billions of years ago, a heatwave struck the universe, leaving its imprint in the light from distant galaxies.
George Becker of the University of Cambridge and colleagues studied the light coming from galaxies at different times in the universe’s history. Dark lines in the spectra mark where certain wavelengths have been absorbed by clouds of gas as the light travels to Earth. The hotter the gas, the more blurred these lines become.
About 12 billion years ago, the gas warmed from 8000 to 15,000 kelvin, probably due to heating from quasars, objects powered by giant black holes, the team will report in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
Keep your eye out for the remake of The Day After Tomorrow. It really will be set long, long ago in a galaxy far, far away, and will be called The Eon After Gasbags.
It stars Al Gore, natch.
