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Dark Matter Discovered

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the lost-and-found dept.

sebFlyte writes "Wired is reporting that scientists have come up to a solution as to where all the matter in the universe actually is. Experiments being done with Chandra, NASA's X-ray telescope have shown up a likely candidate for the solution of the dark matter problem. There are massive quantities of Baryons in a super-heated gas cloud several hundred million light years away."

12 of 386 comments (clear)

  1. Fascinating by ackthpt · · Score: 5, Funny
    I'd love to see the modeling on this stuff, as they have some super computer up the road at UCSC probably grinding away on massive simulations this very minute, but it'd probably look less like those beautiful Hubble shots and more like a stack of paper covered with numbers.

    There are massive quantities of Baryons in a super-heated gas gloud several hundred million light years away."

    Which, IMHO, is a damn fine place for them to be, rather than here.

    The absorption pattern, as detected by Chandra, is consistent with interference caused by carbon, neon, nitrogen and oxygen ions -- in other words, baryons.

    It's really a neon sign on Frogstar World B announcing the construction of a restaurant to be constructed on this location in several billion years and reservations are welcome.

    "Assuming that what we see is a standard portion of the universe, we extrapolated the data and derived the volume density (of baryons in all the clouds) -- and it's consistent with 50 percent," said astronomer Fabrizio Nicastro, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and lead author of the study.

    Later a two-headed, three-armed man entered and ate a piece of fairycake and destroyed their model.

    Whereas baryons account for 4 percent of the total matter and energy in the universe, dark matter is thought to make up 23 percent. The remaining 73 percent of the so-called matter-energy budget consists of what scientists call "dark energy." This energy acts like an anti-gravitational force that, in theory, is causing the universe to expand rather than contract.

    And here I thought it all existed somewhere along Lucas Valley Road and explained the Jar Jar character and Episodes I-III...

    --

    A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
    1. Re:Fascinating by Alsee · · Score: 4, Funny

      I hate to be a Grammar Nazi, but that really should be willan forewhen.

      The metalingual speaker is conceptually at the forewhen temporal point. His subjunctive "now" is forewhen. In this referrence frame the restaurant clearly will be a retrospective actuality (willan), rather than will be a prospective actualization (willon).

      The fact that you needed end the sentence with an the explicit temporal adverb 'already' is a huge tipoff, an awkward construction to bend a prospective tense onto a retrospective object. Changing the tense to willan forwhen makes that explicit temporal adverb clearly redundant. Fixing the tense and dropping the explicit temporal adverb leave the much cleaner sentence:

      Obviously the restaurant willan forewhen constructed.

      -

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      - - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
  2. Nibbler? by blackicye · · Score: 5, Funny

    And would this "superheated gas pocket" perchance reside in Nibbler's lower intestinal tract? ;D

  3. Picture by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Here's a picture.

    1. Re:Picture by fredrikj · · Score: 4, Funny

      Looks like a Doom 3 screenshot to me.

  4. If WIRED says it, it must be true! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Wired is reporting that scientists have come up to a solution as to where all the matter in the universe actually is.

    WIRED also said that "Push is the next Big Thing."

  5. Cleared up nicely... by Electronik · · Score: 4, Funny

    "Baryons, along with mesons, belong to the family of particles known as hadrons, meaning they are composed of quarks. Baryons are fermions composed of three quarks, while mesons are bosons composed of a quark and an antiquark."

    Wikipedia cleared that one up nicely!

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    -=test-sig_0.1.5(NoWhitespaceVersion)=-
  6. In case.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    > > In case anyone's wondering what a baryon is...
    > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baryon

    > In case anyone's wondering what slashdot is...
    > http://www.slashdot.org/

    In case anyone's wondering why the hell am I wasting my time so pointlessly.... I have no life.

  7. How they found it by fiannaFailMan · · Score: 4, Funny

    They reversed the anti-proton to tachyon ratio in the main deflector array after flooding it with a plasma burst diverted from the warp core and then polarising it by reinforcing the nucleon field.

    --
    Drill baby drill - on Mars
  8. Assuming... by podperson · · Score: 5, Funny

    Assuming that what we see is a standard portion of the universe

    An astrophysicist, a physicist, and a mathematician are attending a conference in Scotland. During a break, they take a walk through some of the countryside, and come upon a black sheep.

    "Aha," exclaims the astrophysicist. "I had no idea that all sheep in Scotland are black."

    The physicist looks at her colleague in disbelief. "All sheep in Scotland are black? Are you nuts? We've only seen one sheep!"

    The mathematician interrupts. "And only one side of that sheep."

  9. Re:Baryons by rackhamh · · Score: 4, Funny

    You got nuthin because you didn't write your link right.

    Yup, noticed that. Though I think what you wanted to say was, "In case anybody's wondering what a hyperlink is..." ;)

  10. Who knew... by jpellino · · Score: 4, Funny

    Turns out it was behind the sofa cushions all along.

    --
    "Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."