Four colliding galaxies show best evidence of "Dark Matter" yet

[rdean]

Galactic Smash-Up Shows Where Dark Matter Goes | Wired Science | Wired.com

To figure out dark matter’s location, astronomers looked for the telltale stretching of galaxies located far behind the cluster. Huge masses warp the shape of space-time in their vicinity and bend the path of light, a phenomenon called gravitational lensing. By carefully plotting how galaxies in the background are distorted, astronomers can map where the invisible mass of dark matter lies.

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It's the same thing with locating a "black hole". Either by the energy it releases as matter is sucked into it or by the lensing effect of light being distorted around the even horizon. We know that light is affected by gravity.

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When a lot of dark matter clumps together, as in massive galaxy clusters that contain hundreds or thousands of galaxies, it can act as an enormous magnifying glass for even more distant galaxies. The cluster’s gravity stretches and distorts the light from galaxies behind it like a fun house mirror. Astronomers on Earth see multiple warped images of each galaxy, a phenomenon called gravitational lensing.

Gravitational lensing can give a good idea of how much dark matter is in a cluster, but up until now astronomers had to guess at where exactly the dark matter was.

Now, using an image from Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys, astronomers have built a high-resolution map of exactly where the dark stuff lurks in a galaxy cluster called Abell 1689.

Hubble Helps Build Most-Detailed Dark Matter Map Yet | Wired Science | Wired.com

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I love evolution in all it's forms. Science is glorious.

That's the thing about science. It's "continuous learning". There is always more to learn. I read that scientists "trapped" a "proton". Amazing.

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Scientists Trap Antimatter For More Than 16 Minutes [Singularity Hub] « Darkly Through the Glass

Scientists Trap Antimatter For More Than 16 Minutes
By Peter Murray

Score another victory in science’s relentless pursuit to make all things Star Trek a reality. To the list that already includes universal translators, voice-activated computers, and–sort of–replicators, we now get to add antimatter containment pods. Scientists at CERN have rigged a container to trap anti-matter for more than 16 minutes. It may be a while before they’re used to store energy for antimatter fuel cells, but these ingenious containers are expected to allow particle physicists to go where no particle physicists have gone before.

To begin with, in case you were wondering: yes, antimatter is real. As one of the wonderful examples of where a discovery is worked out on paper before it’s actually observed, English physicist and quantum mechanics giant Paul Dirac predicted antimatter while working out a mathematical model of the subatomic world. Four years later the American physicist Carl Anderson observed such a particle: an electron with the same mass as normal electrons, but with a positive charge.

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How can some believe "science is a religion" or "scientists don't contribute" or "scientists sit on their lazy butts and do nothing but collect money from having a fancy degree?

In part, it's the fault of scientists who don't bother to teach. Another part is those who refuse to understand because it threatens their "beliefs".

We could be doing so much more.

 

[Harry Dresden]

Dean.....whats a Hubble?....

 

[Greenbeard]

On the Abell 2744 story, it's very reminiscent of similar observations of (and claims about) the Bullet Cluster from a few years ago. The modified gravity crowd pushed back on those claims since it wasn't clear, as some were suggesting at the time, that only cold dark matter theories could explain those observations; I'd be interested to see what their reaction is to this, though I suspect it's fairly similar. They're certainly still kicking (see this brief account of a pro-modified Newtonian dynamics--MOND--analysis from March of this year).

I've long had a certain fascination with MOND-type ideas, particularly the notion that they're not about modifications to gravitation per se but rather to inertia itself. There are intriguing hints there at connections to a certain quasi-philosophical hypothesis and foundational physical analysis based on it.

Of course, that doesn't mean there isn't cold dark matter out there; some Juan Collar-type will have to eventually make a definitive detection here on Earth before that comes close to being settled. But there are other perspectives on the question that are every bit as interesting (and, depending on your tastes, perhaps even more so).

 

[Mad Scientist]

That was a pretty good post rdean, I was ready to rep you! That is until you f*cked it up with your anti-religion comment.

 

[editec]

http://darklythroughtheglass.wordpr...ter-for-more-than-16-minutes-singularity-hub/

Scientists Trap Antimatter For More Than 16 Minutes [Singularity Hub] « Darkly Through the Glass

http://darklythroughtheglass.wordpr...ter-for-more-than-16-minutes-singularity-hub/http://darklythroughtheglass.wordpr...ter-for-more-than-16-minutes-singularity-hub/

If anti-matter runs free

Why can't we?

 

[CrusaderFrank]

Good thing those scientists don't manipulate the data

 

[Truthmatters]

How I wish we could actually run our country on the best information possible instead of right wing lies.

 

[CrusaderFrank]

How I wish we could actually run our country on the best information possible instead of right wing lies.

I'll let you know as soon as I get back from hitting the economy destroying ATM.

 

[Mad Scientist]

How I wish we could actually run our country on the best information possible instead of right wing lies.

So Left Wing lies are ok in your book?

 

[Harry Dresden]

How I wish we could actually run our country on the best information possible instead of right wing lies.

yea what Mad Scientist says.....lets get those Left Wing Lies going.....

 

[Momanohedhunter]

That was a pretty good post rdean, I was ready to rep you! That is until you f*cked it up with your anti-religion comment.

Yup. Any way dean and scientist, Keep an eye on Nat. Geo. . They have something on soon about this. Good stuff.

 

[waltky]

Granny wonderin' how can dey see it if its dark?...

Dwarf galaxies suggest dark matter theory may be wrong
16 September 2011 - Dwarf galaxies around the Milky Way are less dense than they should be if they held cold dark matter

Scientists' predictions about the mysterious dark matter purported to make up most of the mass of the Universe may have to be revised. Research on dwarf galaxies suggests they cannot form in the way they do if dark matter exists in the form that the most common model requires it to. That may mean that the Large Hadron Collider will not be able to spot it. Leading cosmologist Carlos Frenk spoke of the "disturbing" developments at the British Science Festival in Bradford.

The current theory holds that around 4% of the Universe is made up of normal matter - the stuff of stars, planets and people - and around 21% of it is dark matter. The remainder is made up of what is known as dark energy, an even less understood hypothetical component of the Universe that would explain its ever-increasing expansion. Scientists' best ideas for the formation and structure of the Universe form what is called the "cosmological standard model", or lambda-CDM - which predicts elementary particles in the form of cold dark matter (CDM).

These CDM particles are believed to have formed very early in the Universe's history, around one millionth of a second after the Big Bang, and they are "cold" in the sense that they are not hypothesised to be particularly fast-moving. The existence of the particles has not yet been proven, as they are extremely difficult to detect - they cannot be "seen" in the traditional sense, and if they exist, they interact only very rarely with the matter we know.

Various experiments are being carried out in deep mines in Yorkshire, on the Fermi Space Telescope, and in the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Switzerland to try and detect these elusive particles, or indirect evidence of their effects. So far, none of these experiments has conclusively spotted them. Scientists working on the problem have recently expressed dismay at the universally negative results coming from the LHC, and this has led some to consider that the standard model may be wrong.

'Disturbing possibilities'