Ring Of Stars Found Around Milky Way

LoPingHo writes "Scientists have found a ring of stars around our galaxy that has previously been undetected due to the faintness of the stars. The article says that it only amounts to 1% of the galaxies mass, but if they are just now finding those, that means there could be even fainter ones there too. Could this be part of the elusive 'dark matter' talked about so much lately?"

Comments

Real explanation

[doogieh]

This ring of stars is the result of a collision, as can be easily proven by observation of Bugs Bunny upon contact with an anvil.

As for the missing mass, that's due to Elmer FUD.

Ring of stars

[CaseyB]

Sounds like they've discovered a Kemplerer Rosette. :)

Re:Ring of stars

[merlin_jim]

Sounds like they've discovered a Kemplerer Rosette [burtleburtle.net]. :)

I believe that a Kemplerer Rosette is characterized as being a stable gravitational configuration of bpdoes orbiting a single point at similar distances and speeds in such a way that all bodies are equidistant, and is further characterized in that one could envision a regular polygon of n-sides, where n is the number of bodies, and if one vertex is mapped to the location of one body, and the center of the polygon is mapped to the common orbit location, then all other vertexes will correspond to locations where the other bodies reside.

This ring of stars, being randomly located, would not qualify. In addition, a Kemplerer Rosette is only stable against small perturbations; if the bodies are far enough apart that other gravitational influences grow large with respect to their gravitational influence on each other, then it is no longer stable.

I don't get it

[Cyno]

Isn't dark matter simply matter that doesn't emit light? If stars get formed by huge clouds of gas that eventually create so much heat and pressure that it starts a process of fusion, then its more than likely all this dark matter we are talking about is just that, dark matter, dirt, whatever you want to call it. It isn't anything significant other than it isn't radioactive, which is a good thing, IMO.

Re:I don't get it

[Christopher Thomas]

Isn't dark matter simply matter that doesn't emit light? If stars get formed by huge clouds of gas that eventually create so much heat and pressure that it starts a process of fusion, then its more than likely all this dark matter we are talking about is just that, dark matter, dirt, whatever you want to call it.

It turns out that the measured effects of dark matter mean that only a small fraction of it can be "normal" matter. Look up "baryonic" and "non-baryonic" dark matter on Google for more information on the subject.

The "normal" component could be anything from white dwarf stars to brown dwarf super-planets to micro black holes to dust and gas, or all of the above. However, that still leaves most of the mass as something else.

Re:I don't get it

[Anne_Nonymous]

Actually, the universe is made of two types of matter: light matter, and dark matter. Light matter is generally acknowledged to be more savory and delicate in flavor. It can be dry, but when cooked properly, retains the universe's natural juices. Light matter is found in the breast and wings. Dark matter, on the other hand, is found on and near the drumsticks of the universe. It contains a higher percentage of fat and is therefore, often more flavorful and gamey.

Go ahead, ask me another one...

Re:I don't get it

[zmooc]

Before you say it, yes its impossible to accelerate to lightspeed.

Only according to a theory that assumes c is a constant while it is not - it's getting slower al the time. It's called CDK. This may also very well mean the red-shift calculations used to determine the speed at which galaxies move away from us are totally wrong which may therefore mean that the universe is not expanding at all (or at least not that fast) which makes the mass-calculations bullshit as well and may very well mean dark mass does not exist and there's just nothing out there. This is a good read about it: http://www.ldolphin.org/bowden.html

Not Dark matter

[jbischof]

Unfortunetly this could not account for dark matter.

The reason scientists believe that there should be dark matter is because of the fact that the stars on the edge of galaxies move faster than they should. According to the measured amounts of mass in a galaxy, the stars on the edges would fly out of orbit at the speeds they are going.

Extra mass on the outer fringe of a galaxy could not contribute to this lack of gravity. I am pretty sure that more than 1% of the galaxy's mass is missing also. But I suppose this goes to show that we never know as much as we think we do.

Checkout the everything 2 node on dark matter for more information.

Dark Matter

[FuryG3]

Somewhat offtopic:

In the world of diagnosing dark matter, scientists think that neutrinos could make up a good hunk of it.

http://www.aip.org/enews/physnews/2002/split/586 -1 .html

I heard about this on NPR's Talk of the Nation: Science Friday last week. What i heard was: in order for neutrino's to change from one type to another, they must have a small ammount of mass, and even if you give neutrino's a tiny tiny tiny ammount of mass, they suddenly account for a good hunk of the dark matter out there.

I know nothing about any of this, so if someone could go into further detail it'd be great.

Re:hmmmm

[jmb-d]

"Scientists have found Ringo Star around our galaxy"

The tipoff was that it had trouble maintaining anything other than a straight 4/4 rhythm.

Re:Dark Matter?

[mao che minh]

Dark matter is just the term for matter that we can't detect. It can be baryonic material or even black holes. "Dark" doesn't mean 'invisible' when they use it in that context.

Re:obTolkien

[kilonad]

Obligatory Tolkien

Is that kind of like token Tolkien?

...mmm, the smell of burning karma.