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Dark matter mapped - First three-dimensional picture of elusive matter throws up mystery.
news@nature.com ^ | 7 January 2007 | Katharine Sanderson

Posted on 01/07/2007 6:55:02 PM PST by neverdem

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To: neverdem
BBC:

Hubble makes 3D dark matter map

21 posted on 01/07/2007 10:06:25 PM PST by Ernest_at_the_Beach
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To: Ernest_at_the_Beach

Thanks for the link.


22 posted on 01/07/2007 10:38:02 PM PST by neverdem (May you be in heaven a half hour before the devil knows that you're dead.)
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To: Southack

You're being silly. There is no point of origin. Space is expanding. The effects of dark matter have been observed for several decades including the collision of two galaxies mentioned in the article.


23 posted on 01/07/2007 10:50:47 PM PST by Moonman62 (The issue of whether cheap labor makes America great should have been settled by the Civil War.)
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To: neverdem
"...dark matter really does exist..."

Damn! I just finished a book showing conclusively that it DOESN'T exist! Now what?

Think I'll stick with FR as my hobby until the deluge ................. FRegards

24 posted on 01/07/2007 11:40:48 PM PST by gonzo (I'm not confused anymore. Now I'm sure we have to completely destroy Islam, and FAST!!)
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To: gonzo

watch out for the shadowy matter


25 posted on 01/07/2007 11:47:12 PM PST by woofie
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To: true_blue_texican
I do not believe in dark matter.

Then it doesn't matter. ;)

26 posted on 01/07/2007 11:54:54 PM PST by Chena
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To: Moonman62
"There is no point of origin. Space is expanding. The effects of dark matter have been observed for several decades including the collision of two galaxies mentioned in the article."

Utter nonsense. If "space" was expanding then molecules would be growing larger.

If dark matter existed, then its gravity (that's why scientists want to pretend it exists, remember) would pull matter toward it, taking into account the "dark matter" map that you see in the article for this thread, which isn't uniform.

The truth is that dark matter is fiction.

27 posted on 01/08/2007 12:34:36 AM PST by Southack (Media Bias means that Castro won't be punished for Cuban war crimes against Black Angolans in Africa)
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To: TXnMA
Unless you are a cosmologist working with valid data,

Well, now, there's a non-sequitir. Dark Matter is the cosmologist's equivalent to the Immaculate Conception. As soon as first principles cause a contradiction, new doctrine is created to explain away the contradiction. Like the scholastics before them, modern cosmologists never consider that the problem is in their first principles.
28 posted on 01/08/2007 4:35:57 AM PST by true_blue_texican (...against all enemies, foreign and domestic...)
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To: Wuli
I think calling an element of the universe we simply do not have the eyes or the technology to directly detect as "dark" gives a negative, pejorative and subjective value to something that might be real but lie just beyond our present level of ignorance.

It's not pejorative. It's literally true. Whatever it is, it does not couple to electromagnetism; it cannot radiate or absorb light. It's not just a matter of a higher or lower frequency. The only handle we have on it (indeed, the only one we can have) is gravity. That's how it was first inferred, and that's how this map was made.

29 posted on 01/08/2007 5:00:36 AM PST by Physicist
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To: RightResponse

Looks like blood and other cells floating in a bloodstream, doesn't it?


30 posted on 01/08/2007 5:37:27 AM PST by silverleaf (Fasten your seat belts- it's going to be a BUMPY ride.)
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To: TXnMA

Many cosmologists discuss their beliefs.

For some, ongoing discoveries affirm their beliefs. For others, ongoing discoveries change their beliefs.

Some (most?) of history's greatest scientist- at least before the past 50 years' aggressive attempts to secularize all public discussions - have accepted that there is room in the discussion tent for science and philosphy to co-reside.


31 posted on 01/08/2007 5:46:29 AM PST by silverleaf (Fasten your seat belts- it's going to be a BUMPY ride.)
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To: Wuli

bttt


32 posted on 01/08/2007 6:14:04 AM PST by varon (Allegiance to the constitution, always. Allegiance to a political party, never.)
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To: Southack
Utter nonsense. If "space" was expanding then molecules would be growing larger.

Actually, new space is created at an exponential rate. Space has physical properties. It is more than mere nothingness. An analogy would be the water in the ocean increasing in volume. The things in the ocean would not get any larger.

If dark matter existed, then its gravity (that's why scientists want to pretend it exists, remember) would pull matter toward it, taking into account the "dark matter" map that you see in the article for this thread, which isn't uniform.

That's exactly what astronomers see. This study has anomalies because of errors. That anomalies increase toward the edges of the field confirms it.

The truth is that dark matter is fiction.

The truth is you are going to great lengths to be willfully ignorant.

33 posted on 01/08/2007 6:27:20 AM PST by Moonman62 (The issue of whether cheap labor makes America great should have been settled by the Civil War.)
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To: Southack
Utter nonsense. If "space" was expanding then molecules would be growing larger.

Flapdoodle.

Local spacetime is bound by gravity. There is enough mass in your average galaxy to create a gravity well that prevents expansion. Molecules are even more absurd.

34 posted on 01/08/2007 7:02:59 AM PST by RadioAstronomer
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To: neverdem

Yep. Looks like somebody threw up.


35 posted on 01/08/2007 7:16:02 AM PST by THBlue50
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To: TXnMA
[And, by the same token, "beliefs" such as the' YEC' misinterpretation of Scripture are embarassingly irrelevant to the study or discussion of cosmology.]

Maybe not so irrelevant. Whether you be a religious person or not, theories start to mesh where hypothetical meets theoretical in the metaphysical conundrum of the unknown. Dark matter organized in ladder fashion that seems to hold the universe together? Sounds pretty organized to me for big bang chaos.
36 posted on 01/08/2007 7:55:55 AM PST by Tenacious 1 (No to nitwit jesters with a predisposition of self importance and unqualified political opinions!)
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To: neverdem

Thanks for the ping.


37 posted on 01/08/2007 8:02:25 AM PST by GOPJ
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To: Physicist

"It's not pejorative. It's literally true. Whatever it is, it does not couple to electromagnetism; it cannot radiate or absorb light. It's not just a matter of a higher or lower frequency. The only handle we have on it (indeed, the only one we can have) is gravity. That's how it was first inferred, and that's how this map was made."

It is pejorative, because "light" and "dark" carry, in all human cultures, weighted values that goe beyond, and even long precede the mundane scientific knowledge and understanding of the properties of phontonic and other energy wavelengths.

"Dark" while scientifically meaning that our human photonic receptors do not receive photon input from something, carries a deeper meaning, culturally as "dark" places are dangerous or, at a minimum at least pose some level of risk and at a maximum are "evil", bad and everything opposite of "good" (which is associated with light). Thus "dark" always carries a subjectively pejoritive value.

To say that "dark" matter does not "absorb" "light" is an error, for we do not really know that. In fact it may "absorb" light so thoroughly, as part of the attributes whereby it seems to not radiate or reflect light.

It would be more accurate and less pejoritive if the missing matter was referred to simply as "hidden"; hidden from we who do not yet have the eyes, technical or otherwise, to "see" it.


38 posted on 01/08/2007 9:07:15 AM PST by Wuli
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To: Wuli
Thus "dark" always carries a subjectively pejoritive value.

And "heavy" means "fat" to many laymen, so that's pejorative, too; perhaps we should say the top quark is "big boned". What are you trying to protect against? Scientists know what is meant by "dark". If some laymen think it means "evil", what of it?

To say that "dark" matter does not "absorb" "light" is an error, for we do not really know that.

We absolutely do know that. Absorption is as easy to detect as emission. Simply measure the spectrum of light from more distant sources, and see what's missing. (Google the term "Lyman Alpha Forest" for a wealth of details.)

Indeed, our ability to measure precisely all of the intervening baryonic matter (i.e., matter made of protons and neutrons) provided one of the clues that revealed the existence of dark matter in the first place: there was nowhere near enough absorption to account for the observed gravitational lensing effects.

In fact it may "absorb" light so thoroughly, as part of the attributes whereby it seems to not radiate or reflect light.

So it absorbs energy but it doesn't radiate it? Where does the energy go? Think about it.

It would be more accurate and less pejoritive if the missing matter was referred to simply as "hidden";

"Hidden" carries its own set of cultural baggage. It implies that there's nothing different about it, except that we haven't looked in the right place. In fact, we know enough about dark matter to say that it's physically unlike anything we've found on Earth. Moreover, we now know where it is.

hidden from we who do not yet have the eyes, technical or otherwise, to "see" it.

We've ruled out seeing it by the strong, weak, or electromagnetic means. That leaves only gravity (which we are using as best we can, indirectly) and some undiscovered, untheorized, unanticipated force, for which there is otherwise no theoretical or experimental motivation to expect.

39 posted on 01/08/2007 10:02:25 AM PST by Physicist
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To: Moonman62
"Actually, new space is created at an exponential rate. Space has physical properties. It is more than mere nothingness. An analogy would be the water in the ocean increasing in volume. The things in the ocean would not get any larger."

Creating new space is *entirely* different from that of space itself "expanding."

A more appropriate way to look at it is that if an ocean freezes, the ice expands and takes up more space...the water literally expands.

Is space literally expanding, or is new space being created?

40 posted on 01/08/2007 11:33:08 AM PST by Southack (Media Bias means that Castro won't be punished for Cuban war crimes against Black Angolans in Africa)
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