Mysterious MilkyWay Warp Finally Explained?

* * Beatles-Beatles writes to tell us Space.com is reporting that scientists think that a collision between mysterious 'dark matter' and two of the Milky Way's nearby neighbors may be causing our galaxy to warp 'like a vinyl record left out in the hot Sun.' From the article: 'The warp is most clearly visible in a thin disk of hydrogen gas that extends across the entire 200,000-light-year diameter of the Milky Way. Viewed sideways, one half of the hydrogen disk appears to stick up above our galaxy's plane of stars and gas, while the other half dips below the plane for a bit and then rises upward again farther away from the galaxy's center.'"

Comments

related article

[User 956]

There was a related article in November-- with evidence pointing towards a massive black hole at the center of the LMC. (The Milky Way's closest neighbor)

How do we know our own shape?

[bronney]

I've always wondered, how do we know our own galaxy's shape? From our point of view. do we just look 360, more stars there, less stars here, therefore we're on the rim side of the galaxy?

Re:**Beatles (thread to be bitchslapped in 3..2..)

[TubeSteak]

But, this thread will be bitchslapped, and I'll probably lose my (Meta)mod privs. Oh well. Maybe some day we'll get an honest answer out of the admins.

My mod privs dissappeared a while ago and I'm still waiting for my Meta-Mod privs to dissappear. I don't think they will though, as nobody watches the watchers of the watchers.

Other than that, I agree with everything you said.

This reminds me of another flare-up on /. recently about someone called "Roland Piquepaille"

Basically, he's been submitting since 2002 and has had similar complaints dog him ever since.

I'll pull two comments from the thread and then go my merry way:
comment #1 Monday January 02, 2005

I recently had a long email conversation about this with Taco. He basically isn't interested in feedback, which seems very not in the spirit of open source to me. He also said that /. doesn't track who is submitting what and doesn't care about a submitter's positive or negative track record because it would be hard to keep track of such things. If only there were a way of automating the process...

a reply to comment #1

I guess you have noticed the censorship of this thread by someone with unlimited mod points.... Previously, this was just a curiosity to me, but with the censorship on top, I've become fairly irritated by this...

I hope we don't get hit by one of the infinite mod-point-squad

Re:**Beatles (thread to be bitchslapped in 3..2..)

[zerocool^]

Yeah, I've seen those about Roland.

The fact is, shameless as he is, Roland is actually a real journalist, who writes for "real" journalistic sources (quotation marks denote wired). And he's been a slashdot member for a long time.

So I let him slide. Plus all his greenlights aren't from the same ModMin.

**Beatles has accomplished in THREE MONTHS what Roland accomplished in THREE YEARS. And without ever once pretending like he gave a fuck about technology.

~Will

Re:**Beatles (thread to be bitchslapped in 3..2..)

[roman_mir]

My sentiments exactly. UID 125474, about 20 articles submitted over the 5 years, one was strangely approved long long time ago.

Re:**Beatles (thread to be bitchslapped in 3..2..)

[zerocool^]

Right. And I am not even whining about my submissions. They were rejected, someone submitted them with a better headline, so-and-so wants to give a UFIA to submitter's mom, whatever, I don't care.

All I was pointing out was that the fact that 800,000 people have signed up since me, and that I've been here 5 years; the fact that I've been contributing positively (I had 50 karma long long long before karma went to the bill-and-ted system), the fact that enough people respect my opinion that I have over 130 fans (of which I'm very proud and greatful; see my journal on making fans friends), the fact that I still have my complete A-Z archive of Geeks in Space, and that I listened to it from the very first one - I think all these things entitle me to at least ask these questions.

Blowing me off doesn't really make me feel like I mean anything to this community, that my contributions don't matter, and I'll be honest, Jamie... it stings a little.

~Will

Re:**Beatles (thread to be bitchslapped in 3..2..)

[zerocool^]

Click on the link to his userpage (the ~/* * Beatles-Beatles link), and click on the links he's submitted.

For starters, they all start with "Beatles-Beatles writes to tell us [insert real news source here] has found a new [treatment for cancer | robot arm | galaxy | fad diet].

They're all posted by ScuttleMonkey.

And they all prominantly link to his webpage, which has nothing to do with him-as-a-person (there's no bio) or technology-in-general.

~W

Re:**Beatles (thread to be bitchslapped in 3..2..)

[abertoll]

That is mighty suspicious. I noticed some of the stories now say " An anonymous reader writes"

Really an explanation?

[Jugalator]

I guess one *could* call it "explained", although involving this "mysterious dark matter" is much like explaning how the Sun can shine as "we now know the Sun get fueled by some mysterious nuclear process".

This explanation only highlights our problems with dark matter even more, and things get especially funny if it's later discovered if it didn't exist. Then watch a number of theories fall apart during a night.

Re:Really an explanation?

[Markus Registrada]

And, of course, there's no such thing as "hydrogen gas" in the interstellar medium. Essentially all of it is ionized to some degree, and ionizations of one per 10,000 neutral atoms causes it to behave with dynamics fundamentally differently from neutral gas.

As a result, all this material (which collectively outmasses the stars sprinkled here and about) responds to other familiar but enormously stronger forces in addition to gravitation. Therefore, any model relying solely on gravitation will depend on such fantastical constructs as "dark matter" to match observations.

We see similar effects reported as apparent anomalies in galactic rotation, based on measurements of motion of interstellar "gas". To expect the motion of stars in a galaxy to match the motion of the plasma between them is to assume that no electromagnetic forces are in play. This is a popular assumption among astrophysicists, who as a rule never studied any real plasma dynamics in school (although they may have studied MHD, which doesn't apply), but the evidence suggests otherwise.

It won't matter much longer

[core plexus]

This related story about a massive cluster of Red Supergiants will make this, and all other space stories, moot.

Also, global warming will be a thing of small concern.

I just realised though

[tod_miller]

Despite how much I hate perl, I can go to slashcode and add rel="nofollow" MYSELF, but, the political/apathetic nature of slashdot will mean this will never get folded in.

cowboyneal, add a rel="nofollow" to ALL, EACH and EVERY link on slashdot please. Google doesn't browse at +5 and doesn't have a friends list.

How can an IT techie geeky site be so behind the times.

What makes me laugh is this site is an artificial mecca because the only reason we come here is to find out what everyone else is reading, not necessarily to read it ourselves, we see older news, but this has a critical mass of people using it that it is more informative as a twat-o-sphere-omometer.

Slashdot is digging it's own grave if it has become a site to find out what the blunt edge are reading.

Hey here is another thing cowboyneal, yes we are all impressed with your CAPTCHA, why not have it ONLY if posting as an AC, so I never have to enter it because my first preview ALSO LOGS ME IN YOU DUMB SHIT!

This is so painfully bad, it is like a deperate no life developer forcing his pitiful efforts in front of us for praise. But he screwed it up, he put it on the wrong page, and he has shown his utter INCOMPETENCE for development and design and usability. Dork!

Look what I did mommy! Mommy, why don't you and daddy like me?! Mommy come back!

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