Imaging Dark Matter With Gravity

Phase Shifter writes: "I was looking at Lucent's website when I found a link to this article about how a dim galaxy cluster was discovered by its gravity instead of its light. They say the same technique could be used to determine the distribution of dark matter in the universe."

Comments

Dude!

[Unknown Poltroon]

Friends dont let friends drink and post!!!

YOU are way off

[A nonymous Coward]

There are fine reasons to think there is about 10 times the matter out there than can be seen, such as galaxies could not rotate as they do without more mass. Theory my ass, it's standard calculations, nothing tricky. in fact, one could even go so far as to say that EVIDENCE requires the extra mass, and they are bending theories to fit the evidence.

The most disturbing possibility...Futurama

[Ukab the Great]

Future scientists will conclude that Matt Groening was right: dark matter is basically cute alien shit.

Re:The most disturbing possibility...Futurama

[The Iconoclast]

"Every pound of which [Dark Matter] weighs over TEN THOUSAND pounds!" - The Professor

Any Relation To Black Holes?

[Self Bias Resistor]

I'm wondering if this method of finding objects by mass instead of light (using a nifty property of physics called "gravitational lensing") is in any way related to finding black holes by their gravitational pull or the electromagnetic emissions? In a way, both methods find things by indirect measurement because you don't have to see it to know it's there. You can simply measure the object's effects on everything else around it (e.g. black holes pulling in stars and other matter that generates electromagnetic radiation).