Posted on 04/17/2015 2:15:22 PM PDT by BenLurkin
The research and maps, which span a large area of the sky, are the product of a massive effort of an international team from the US, UK, Spain, Germany, Switzerland, and Brazil. They announced their new results at the American Physical Society (APS) meeting in Baltimore, Maryland.
According to cosmologists, dark matter particles stream and clump together over time in particular regions of the cosmos, often in the same places where galaxies form and cluster. Over time, a “cosmic web” develops across the universe. Though dark matter is invisible, it expands with the universe and feels the pull of gravity. Astrophysicists then can reconstruct maps of it by surveying millions of galaxies, much like one might infer the shifting orientation of a flock of birds from its shadow moving along the ground.
DES scientists created the maps with one of the world’s most powerful digital cameras, the 570-megapixel Dark Energy Camera (DECam), which is particularly sensitive to the light from distant galaxies. It is mounted on the 4-meter Victor M. Blanco Telescope, located at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in northern Chile. Each of its images records data from an area 20 times the size of the moon as seen from earth.
In addition, DECam collects data nearly ten times faster than previous machines. According to David Bacon, at the University of Portsmouth’s Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation, “This allows us to stare deeper into space and see the effects of dark matter and dark energy with greater clarity. Ironically, although these dark entities make up 96% of our universe, seeing them is hard and requires vast amounts of data.”
(Excerpt) Read more at universetoday.com ...
Good tune :)
Shameful that those guys still aren’t in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
First album I ever owned: 3DN’s `Golden Biscuits’ on 8-track. I even installed a `reverb’ speaker in the floor kick panel of my VW sedan ...
Come Sat. night my 16 year old self splashed on a little Hai Karate and—look out ladies!
Specious.
“specious” I agree.
Science must be replicable. Using scientific methodology you frame your hypothesis, do your work and publish your results. Then someone else must be able to follow your methods and arrive at the same result.
Try re-doing the OJ Simpson trial ...
Law is a practical activity, one using Aristotle’s `trivium’ subjects—logic, rhetoric, grammar—or `people plumbing’. A lot of law is ad hoc even with statutes and case law (clearing throat, especially recently).
On the other hand, astrophysics, for example, is an artistic activity rather than a utilitarian one. It requires real thinking: math, astronomy, geometry, music—the quadrivium.
Science isn’t the `size of the chancellor’s foot’. It either is or isn’t; the angle/distance/note is either right or it is not, and anyone who knows what he is doing is the judge of it.
So yeah, comparing the two really is apples and oranges.
Not at all. In science, nothing is ever proven, some things are just more likely to be true than the alternatives.
When Henri Poincaré entered the Ecole Polytechnique in 1873 the chemistry department scrupulously kept the faculty balanced at one atomicist for each anti-atomicist. It was not until after World War I that atomicism had completely cleared the field. What evidence can you personally cite, without using google, to support the atomic theory of matter, other than appeal to authority? (I would have trouble defending atomicism on first principles, by the way.)
We have known, at least since the 1930’s, that the kinematics of galaxies cannot be explained by the observed matter (stars) and Newtonian/Einsteinian mechanics. It is an eighty year old problem. With the discovery of black holes - which incidentally cannot be directly observed only inferred - it was hoped that a solution might be available. Black holes are not massive enough to hold their host galaxies together, and even it they were, the kinematics are still wrong.
Other theories have been tried, modified Newtonian dynamics (MOND), dark “debris”, but they are inconsistent with observations, not just with theory.
Dark matter/dark energy fit observations and do not directly contradict current physical theories. No one is taking dark matter/dark energy as dogma, physicists are at least as skeptical as you. But they provide the best explanation of observations anyone has come up with.
No, see http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/3280367/posts?page=27#27
The problem is more than 80 years old, and no one claims to have all the answers.
http://www.learner.org/courses/physics/unit/text.html?unit=10&secNum=2
“Dark matter/dark energy fit observations and do not directly contradict current physical theories.”
Of course they fit observations. When you just plug a figure in to the equations to force the math to work, it will work. That’s the nature of a “plug”.
Dark matter/energy is the modern day “aether”. It can’t be observed, its properties are only what are needed to make the current theories work, and nothing more, and its existence was only posited because of deficits in the current theory.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.