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)

Re:related article

[eclectic4]

"vidence pointing towards a massive black hole at the center of the LMC. (The Milky Way's closest neighbor)"

Um, evidence is pointing towards that being the case in most if not all Galaxies, even our own Milky Way. That article alone was over 5 years old.

hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps this is because the two-thirds of the people on Earth are fat. This could result in the part of the galaxy that Earth is located in to be weighed down which is warping the entire Milky Way.

'McDonalds: Changing the world -- literally'

missing info

[amazon10x]

The article fails to say (or perhaps I missed it?) how severe the warp is nor how fast the warping is happening currently. Furthermore, it doesn't say when this warping was first recorded.

Re:missing info

[maggard]

Ignoring the dubious submitter of the story...

The Milky Way is b-i-g. The warping is not happening on a scale we'd see in our lifetimes. Indeed it likely started when the Earth was still a rock with scum problem. It'll continue long past the date the Earth is a rock with a dust problem.

Don't panic.

While dark matter (& energy), galactic distortions, and giant black holes are interesting cosmologically (and further our understanding of the universe) there's no need to start digging a hole in the back yard and buying space/time-warp-b-gone merchandise from the back of magazines.

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:How do we know our own shape?

[ackthpt]

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?

In clearer areas, like high elevation or low humidity, and away from light pollution, you can practically see it with the naked eye.

But beyond that I'm sure they've whipped together a few models with super computers to demonstrate it.

Besides, our galaxy isn't warped, it's Bent!

Re:How do we know our own shape?

[Anonymous Coward]

the galaxy's general "flat" shape is visible from the milky way being a thin line in the sky. finding out our location in the milky way is a more interesting proposition. due to the obscuring clouds of interstellar matter, we do not see the milky way being brighter on one side or the other, so it appears to be equally bright on both sides. the first indication of us being located toward the rim was the fact that the globular clusters that we observe are mostly on one side of us. when we discovered methods for measuring distances (based on the relationship between the length of a period of a type of star called the "cepheid variable" and its brightness) [first established by astronomer Leavitt], we could measure their distance from us and create a three dimensional map of the globular clusters' location in the sky. using this method, it was determined that the globular clusters are distributed with spherical symmetry about a point in the plane of the milky way (a point which was, as it happens, quite far from our own solar system). by observing that globular clusters are symmetrically distributed around the centers of other spiral galaxies (most notably the andromeda galaxy), we make the inference that our globular clusters' distribution is also centered on the center of our galaxy - and thus we determine our position relative to the center of the milky way.

well, at least that's how it went down at the beginning of the 20th century. a decade or two later when radio telescopy was developed, we were able to observe these things in a more direct fashion. but it is interesting to follow the historical development of our own location in the galaxy. :)

Re:How do we know our own shape?

[barakn]

The plane of the Milky Way and the Celestial Equator do not coincide, so the Milky Way appears to the north and to the south of the Celestial Equator. Thus the Milky Way is visible from the North Pole on a clear night. Perhaps you're confusing it with the Magellanic Clouds.

Re:How do we know our own shape?

[niktemadur]

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?

If it was up to visible light only, you'd be right; in fact, I believe it was William Herschel, co-discoverer of Uranus, who first attempted in the late 1700's to make a diagram of the galaxy, based exclusively on visible-light observing. As it turned out, the Milky Way seemed to have a "powder puff" shape and the sun was near the center!

However, for the better part of the last century we've been using infrared, ultraviolet, x-ray, radio, etc. If you point and shoot a picture with an infrared telescope in the direction of the Saggitarius constellation, the "loudest" source of x-rays in the night sky, the image you get is that of a central galactic bulge and a symmetrical disc that cuts across the bulge and extends outwards both left and right. This image is consistent with all observations of other spiral galaxies.

I'll say it for the under 30 crowd

[ackthpt]

'like a vinyl record left out in the hot Sun.'

What's a vinyl record?

;-)

Re:I'll say it for the under 30 crowd

[dgatwood]

Ob. Futurama reference:

That must be an old pronunciation of compact disc. You know, kind of like you're always saying ask instead of axe?

Re:I'll say it for the under 30 crowd

[ozmanjusri]

What's a vinyl record?

If you were English, you'd be saying "What's a hot sun?"

Re:I'll say it for the under 30 crowd

[HermanAB]

What is a Sun? Some newfangled PDP11?

Re:I'll say it for the under 30 crowd

[Burb]

Dear Roy Castle.

I have a black phonographic disk with a hole in it. Is this a record?

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

[MrPerfekt]

Here, here. I second and third and fourth this.

Taco doesn't read the site and SM abuses the crap out of the system.

Digg is looking better all the time.

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

[zerocool^]

Digg is looking better all the time.

Now, hold on... I'm not suggesting that we jump ship.

All I'm asking for is Journalistic integrity.

I know digg exists. I deliberately come back to slashdot. The reason? I'm not here for the articles. I'm here for the discussion. I can get the information anywhere. I am at slashdot because I want to know what others think. There are some very smart and very connected people on Slashdot, and I value their opinion. I also find out about alternatives or other theories or random_x piece of software I didn't know existed from the comments. I consider it a great day when I see someone say "Well, if you like X, you'll love Y". That to me is slashdot's strength. And I try to contribute positively where I can.

All I am asking for is for the Admins to have a little integrity. Whatever happened to honesty? Whatever happened to shaking a man's hand, looking him in the eye, and telling the truth? I'm that kind of guy... so are many of my fellow Slashdot readers. And I have an almost irrational belief in the fundamental "goodness" of mankind.

If I had to nail down the problems of Slashdot these days, it's very simple:

1.) They don't hold their admins to the same level of integrity to which their readers hold themselves.
2.) They irrationally refuse to believe people like me exist; they refuse to believe that the strength of Slashdot is in the content provided by the readers.

But, one at a time. Let's get 1 working first, and then I think 2 will fall into place.

~Will

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.

Article summary in Limerick form

[melvin xavier]

There might a crash in the stars
Whose damage leaves oddly-shaped scars
Astronomists patter,
"It might be dark matter
That's making the warp so bizarre!"

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

[Cattywampus]

Oh, great.

You've gone and mentioned your UID.

Now all the old farts with the five-digit-or-less UIDs are going to come out of the woodwork.

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

[Wind_Walker]

No, we never will get a straight answer out of the Admins. Why? Because they no longer answer to us. They answer to their Corporate Overlords (tm).

I gave up on Slashdot providing reliable information a long time ago. Now I come to skim the headlines and check out the trolls.

Why the world is so screwed up

[raider_red]

I guess we should have known. The whole friggin' galaxy is warped.

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

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Vinyl tracks

[suso]

causing our galaxy to warp 'like a vinyl record left out in the hot Sun.'

Now that's what I call an extended LP.

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

[Rob Bos]

*shakes his cane*

young'in.

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

[quokkapox]

When did this bullshit start anyway? Or has it just been a slow decline. I don't remember hearing any of this back in 1999.

It would be nice if the slashdot management would engage in a little give and take to keep the community here satisfied and (as zerocool mentioned) maintain some journalistic integrity. Why NOT strive for that, other than pure laziness?

Digg is not a substitute for slashdot. You can actually learn by reading the comments here.

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"

Slashcode

[quokkapox]

I just realized that the software that supposedly runs this site is supposedly open source. Have any of you old farts (or younger ones) reviewed the code? How is bitchslapping implemented? How is moderator access revocation implemented?

Complain to the Advertisers?

[TubeSteak]

I'd rather have TrollKore and the GNAA back in full force than sloppy editing.

ASCII art & subtle comment trolls were far more amusing than bad /. articles and editors who don't correct the submitter's spelling.

Only solution is to complain to Slashdot's advertisers.

Tell 'em something like

"your advert appeared above this [poorly spelled, factually incorrect, un/misinformed, badly researched, any of the above] story. While you may have little to do with the content of the site, it does reflect on your company and its products. Please ask OSDN to consider aiming for a higher standard of editing."

I know it's like going over your boss' head and complaining. But ScuttleMonkey & Co. don't really seem to care.

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

[pomo monster]

The minute Digg gets a threaded comment system remotely as usable as this one, it's goodbye Slashdot.

Blitz abstract

[mattr]

Here's the abstract for the presentation by Leo Blitz on the warp. Anyone who was at the AAS, knows someone who does or understands dark matter professionally, how about telling us if this tablecloth fluttering mentioned by Blitz in TFA might be useful as a test of dark matter? Abstract follows.

AAS 207th Meeting, 8-12 January 2006
Session 40 Galactic Structure with WIMPS, STARS and Gas
Oral, Monday, 10:00-11:30am, January 9, 2006, Salon 1

[40.05] The Shape of the HI Warp in the Outer Milky Way Disk
E.S. Levine, L. Blitz, C. Heiles (UC Berkeley), M. Weinberg (University of Massachusetts, Amherst)

Although the warping of the disk of the Milky Way has been known since 1957, our work represents the first time the Milky Way warp has been quantitatively described and we find it to be both elegant and surprising. We examine the outer Galactic HI disk for deviations from the b=0 plane by constructing maps of disk surface density, mean height, and thickness. We find that the Galactic warp is well described by a vertical offset plus two Fourier modes of frequency 1 and 2, all of which grow with Galactocentric radius. The global warp demonstrates approximately an order of magnitude more power in each mode with azimuthal wavenumber m=0,1, and 2 than in any higher frequency mode; thus three and only three modes are necessary to describe the large-scale behavior of the warp. The power in the m=0 and m=2 modes grows starting from around 15 kpc; the m=1 mode is the most powerful everywhere in the outer disk. We outline six observational conclusions regarding the warp that any potential theoretical mechanism must satisfy. We will also show a movie that demonstrates the evolution of the three modes with time.

ESL and LB are supported by NSF grant AST 02-28963. CH is supported by NSF grant AST 04-06987.

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.

I hate to say it, but I don't see your conclusion.

[YesIAmAScript]

What conclusion am I to draw?

That /. plays favorites?

That wouldn't surprise me one bit. You know, the world isn't fair. Does it guarantee somewhere in the slashdot charter that slashdot will be fair about approving submissions?

Or are you accusing that perhaps someone at /. is taking money to greenlight articles?

If so, just come out and say it.

Personally I think it's a stretch, I just don't hold slashdot in high enough esteem that it would be worth paying to get articles like this on it (unlike crappy "comparo" articles).

Baloney

[quokkapox]

i suggest you look more into this matter, many things like the red shift are dependant to a degree on this, and its more voodoo than science (still.)

Boy, this thread is a trip. Parent's math is bunkum and your assertation which I directly quote above is also incorrect. Redshift has NOTHING to do with parallax measurements of distance, which can be calculated to many significant digits. Voodoo indeed. Don't believe everything you read on the internet that's modded +5, Informative...

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.

Re:At it again...

[plaxion]

"The real question is this: What the hell do the beatles and science have in common?"

Umm... as I recall, they sang 'Lucy in the sky with diamonds'... though it's still debated whether what they were singing about falls under the field of astronomy or that of chemistry. ;)

Re:At it again...

[barakn]

Go to your preferences page (this link may or may not work) and turn off ScuttleMonkey. And then stop bitching.

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!

please type the word in this image: smooth
random letters - if you are visually impaired, please email us at pater@slashdot.org

Further Research Shows

[Timberwolf0122]

The additional mass and friction with dark matter is not only causing the milkway to warp like a record in the sun but also results in the milkyway playing at 45 speed unlike other LP class galaxies that naturaly travel at 78.

Re:specifics on my subpar meat propaganda, please.

[quokkapox]

I don't even know where to begin with this crap, and it's not worth my time. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timecube. Actually don't do that, it will make you worse.

Re:Somebody remind me why we need Dark Matter?

[kf6auf]

Basically, we look at a galaxy and see how fast parts of it are spinning. From there, we can calculate the acceleration due to gravity on different parts of (a=v^2/r) and set this equal to the gravitational acceleration (a=GM/r^2) to find the total mass inside of whichever part we are looking at (mass outside has no net gravitational effect).

Once we have gravitationall calculated the mass distribution, we can look at normal images of the galaxy, note that we can only see 5% of that amount of mass, and declare the remaining 95% of the mass to be dark matter because we can't see it.

The current most plausible idea is that there is some other substance out there we can't see, but there are other theories involving different laws of physics, we're just not happy enough with any theory yet to abandon the others. The goal is always to make the physics fit the observations; once the observation was that the speed of light is constant, scientists concluded that there was no ether, even if they didn't understand why until 25 years later. We're just guessing that there is something we cannot see, like the way the neutrino was discovered.

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

[Mr. Flibble]

The minute Digg gets a threaded comment system remotely as usable as this one, it's goodbye Slashdot.

Agreed. And check out my UID. I am a long time slashdot user - and it has been my homepage ever since I registered.

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

[dair]

young'in.

Get the hell off my lawn!

Re:specifics on my subpar meat propaganda, please.

[Floody]

I believe you have misunderstood me, because of my own obscurity. I understand that the entire concept behind the spectroscope(which is what we read a 'redshift' off of), is based on the assumption that light acts much like sound (we still do not fully understand light). It goes like this. The doppler effect says that, if you are sitting in your car at a red light, and there is a huge 18 wheeler doing 75 in front and to the left of you, about to go through the green light, you will hear the sound from the 18 wheeler at a higher pitch frequency when it is coming towards you (since it is compressing the sound waves), and at a lower frequency when it has past you and it is moving away(since it is refracting the sound waves). now, the theory is, that possibly light does the same thing. a spectroscope breaks the star light through a prism and displays black lines going through one of the colors (black lines shifted through the red area = the star is moving away or black lines shifted to the blue area = the star is moving closer to us). this is not documented to be true, since we still do not fully understand the nature of light, although many people think they do. (many people say "light travels at 186 miles per second." and it seems noone knows the end to that statement to actually make it scientific. "light travels at 186 miles per second IN A VACUUM.". Noone knows exactly what light is, nor do they know that it always travels at the same speed throughout all time, space, and matter. think about the theories regarding black holes, that light can be attracted by gravity-- well, if light can be attracted by gravity, obviously the speed of light is not a constant. In 1999 Dr. Hau at Harvard slowed light down to 38 MPH, in 2000 Dallas Morning News (2/28/2000) said that some folks there slowed it down to 1MPH, then in 2001 nytimes had an article that said that scientists completely stopped light, held it in place, and then sent it out on its way.

Yeah, ok, pure psuedo-science.

(probably just a typo, but you don't really think light travels at 186 miles per second, do you?)

The acoustic doppler effect you labor on about is a simplistic model that may help the layperson grossly visualize concepts like em redshift, but it should not be assumed that a remotely similar process is at work when considering topics like stellar spectroscope shift. Audible sound represents a compression wave which propogates through a medium; electromagnetic energy does not. It can interact with matter, but it exists as a separate entity and is not a mechanical process. While field equations share some fundamental aspects with wave mechanics, this does not make them the same thing. Mathematically, there are many instances in nature where similar functions and constants are "re-used"; and generally one can simply attribute such similarities to thermodynamics (i.e. if stars were naturally square, this would violate the laws of thermodynamics).

While inter-stellar distance calculations based on stellar spectroscopy are certainly capable of being inaccurate for a number of reasons, the science behind these is based on a number of core principals wherein the speed of light is largely irrelevant for determining that the model fits (in one form or another):

1. Spectroscopy: A well studied, deterministic science with which one is capable of determining elemental components based on electromagnetic frequency distribution. The spectroscopic fingerprint is "hard"; e.g. there exist no in-between spectroscopic gradients between two elements, any more than there exist magic elements "in-between" those identified on a periodic table.

2. Red-shift occurs when an emitting object is receeding from the reference frame of an observer. This has been demonstrated experimentally and is reproducible.

3. Intersteller objects which are known to be receeding via parallax measurement exhibit redshift. Their spectroscopy

*shakes his cane*

[tgd]

you're the young'in

Subliminal messages?

[CrimsonScythe]

* * 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.'

Oh, let me guess... That wouldn't happen to be a Beatles record, now would it?