Galaxies Floating on a Dark Matter Stream

Darkman, Walkin Dude writes "A team in Switzerland has discovered that most of the small satellite galaxies around the Milky Way's near-twin, Andromeda, are lined up in a single plane that slices through Andromeda's spiral disc. Using images from the Hubble space telescope, soon to be decommissioned, the researchers found that 9 of the 14 of Andromeda's satellites lay on a relatively narrow plane bisecting Andromeda. From the article: 'The team believes the plane could have formed in several ways. In one scenario, the galaxies may have fallen towards Andromeda along an invisible filament of dark matter. Computer simulations show these filaments can form a cosmic web along which galaxies flow.'"

Comments

Re:Bigger mystery

[Durrok]

Here's how slashdot works: You give them money, you get to see articles first Simple, no?

Hubble Space Telescope

[Anonymous Coward]

Using images from the Hubble space telescope, soon to be decommissioned...

Do you know something that NASA and us astronomers don't?

Hubble soon to be decommissioned

[Alain Williams]

Yes, well of course - lots of money needs to be saved so that there will be the budget to blast Iraq in a few months time.

North Korea is making far bigger noises about making their own nuclear bombs, but no one seems to make such a fuss .... Oh, but wait a mo, .... does it have much oil underground ?

Re:Hubble soon to be decommissioned

[Tony Hoyle]

North Korea actually *does* have WMD. No politician would want to start a war with them as it'd be too unpopular when the first US city got wiped out.

It's cheaper/easier to pick on countries that can't fight back - Iraq, and soon Iran (with possibly a stopover in Syria).

Re:Hubble soon to be decommissioned

[brian0918]

We only go after countries that don't have WMDs, otherwise there would be the threat of them launching them at us. That's why we don't go after North Korea, because they do have WMDs.

Re:Hubble soon to be decommissioned

[kadathseeker]

For the record, I want to invade NK and overthrow their govt. I don't give two shits about oil being there or not. The NK govt. is more of Big Brother than the US or UK govt.s could ever hope to be. I don't care about nukes either. I care about freeing their people, because as much as all of our govt.s suck, theirs sucks more.

Re:Hubble soon to be decommissioned

[DigiShaman]

That, and the fact it we don't want to be fighting wars on two different fronts. Chances are, we will deal with N. Korea with military means once we are sure Europe can take on Iran. It's WWIII, I'm bloddy serious. The chess peices are just falling into place as we speak. Question is, who or whome will get check-mated?

Re:Hubble soon to be decommissioned

[sco08y]

Chances are, we will deal with N. Korea with military means once we are sure Europe can take on Iran.

Um, wouldn't Europe need a military to take on Iran?

Re:Hubble soon to be decommissioned

[Shihar]

That, and the fact it we don't want to be fighting wars on two different fronts. Chances are, we will deal with N. Korea with military means once we are sure Europe can take on Iran. It's WWIII, I'm bloddy serious.

That is so utterly wrong I can't even begin to put words to it. The US will never ever deal with North Korea militarily unless North Korea attacks another nation.

People forget that the capital of South Korea is in artillery range of North Korea. North Korea has a massive amount of chemical and biological weapons at its disposal. In any attack, North Korea would intentionally inflict massive civilian casualties on South Korea has it dumped chemical and conventional rounds into heavily populated zones with artillery and missiles. Further, you can pretty much rest assure that if North Korea will fire on Tokyo with chemical weapons and nukes.

There will be no war with North Korea. Every nation in the region would step in to stop it, South Korea, Japan, and China included. When I say "stop it" I don't just mean "apply diplomatic pressure". I mean they would physically stop it with force of arms if they had to. Of course, that isn't going to be a problem because no president or congress would ever be so insane as to destroy the world economy by drowning some of the largest economies in Asia (Japan and South Korea) in a chemical cloud and receiving sanctions from all the others (China and everyone else).

The idea that the US would ever invade North Korea is utterly inane. The only thing North Korea could ever do to provoke a response from the US would be to nuke the US. I imagine at that point our response wouldn't be invasion, it would be glassing.

Re:Hubble soon to be decommissioned

[DigiShaman]

If N. Korea started to attack first, we would not fight a conventional warfare. They would be stopped frozen in their tracks once a few nuclear bombs wipe out all major cities. Fuck politics, this is war at this point. This stratagy would be the ONLY effective one against N. Korea. After the fact, then everyone would move the troops in to take out the rouge remaining forces.

I don't write the rules of engagement, I just call it how it I see it from a REALISTIC standpoint

First US city?

[246o1]

You mean the first S. Korean or Japanese city, which matters to me, because I might be included. As America's strongest allies in the region, and home to something like 100K US soldiers (who are only intermittently subject to local laws, thanks to the legacy of post-WWII and Korean War US planning), Japan and S. Korea will be in grave danger if there's a shooting war with N. Korea.