My guess is the large-scale structure of the universe is somehow the result of the first few moments of the Big Bang, that these filaments, threads and voids were artifacts of the initial explosion. But that's only a guess. Still, whatever it is, it must hold some clues as to the history, as well as the overall evolution of the universe. In other words, any theory hoping to explain the origin or fate of the cosmos must also be able to explain this structure we are seeing. In a way, this is good news. If the universe is totally homogeneous and uniform at the largest scales, it doesn't give us much evidence for us to speculate with.

The local TV station just got a fancy new high-tech weather radar, and the imagery we've been getting on the evening news every night is much more detailed, and of much higher resolution. We're starting to see all sorts of features and structures that weren't available with the old radar system. Instead of just blobs and rough shapes, we're starting to see all kinds of fine structure that wasn't visible before, and sometimes these features are obviously interacting with thunderstorms, fronts, etc. One of these features that we weren't aware of before is thin arcs of light precipitation emanating from thunderstorms, sometimes precipitating other storms as they flow, like shock waves, through unstable air. We're not just watching fronts of corps and divisions moving and colliding through the atmospheric battlefields, now we can see down to the brigade, battalion and company levels.

I can't wait till hurricane season really gets underway so we can get a clearer look at what's going on inside these big tropical systems.

New data is always exciting...