Slashdot Mirror
Scientists Expand Knowledge of Dark Matter
nife00 writes "BBC News is reporting that British scientists at Cambridge have expanded the current understanding of the mysterious particles known as dark matter." According to the article: "[The Cambridge Team] has at last been able to place limits on how it is packed in space and measure its "temperature". "It's the first clue of what this stuff might be," said Professor Gerry Gilmore. "For the first time ever, we're actually dealing with its physics," he told the BBC News website."
The article mentions that there's quite a bit more of it than normal matter, and that it's about 10,000 degrees (... C?). Is that consistent? It just sounds odd for dark matter to have such a higher energy level than normal matter, weakly interacting or not.
Actually, they don't even say whether 'Professor Gerry Gilmore' is part of the group that did this research, or whether he is just someone they asked 'Hey guy, what do think about this stuff?'. I.e. they don't even identify clearly any member of this 'Institute of Astronomy, Cambridge, team'.
"could it be the case that we might not even be able to understand and explain some phonemena simply because our brain power is not adequate."
... But, paradoxically, to understand Gödel's proof is to find a sort of liberation. For many logic students, the final breakthrough to full understanding of the Incompleteness Theorem is practically a conversion experience. This is partly a by-product of the potent mystique Gödel's name carries. But, more profoundly, to understand the essentially labyrinthine nature of the castle is, somehow, to be free of it.
Godel has already shown that no system of description is adequate, this is independant of of the amount of brain power on hand (or in head). People often wonder why maths is so good at describing the Universe, I belive it is because it is actually describing the model used by the brain to create the illusion of "I". ie: The simulated Universe containing the simulated self we all carry around in our heads. The "physical universe we live in" is an illusion.
A favourite quote from the above link: Although this theorem can be stated and proved in a rigorously mathematical way, what it seems to say is that rational thought can never penetrate to the final ultimate truth
I find the quote interesting because it relates a similar experience to religious conversion, ie: acceptance of the unknowable.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
I was actually wondering, could it be the case that we might not even be able to understand and explain some phonemena simply because our brain power is not adequate.
Absolutely. To detect something one must have a tool of finer resolution than the thing itself. By corollary to understand something must one have a tool that has a "finer" resolution? I believe that one cannot understand things like entanglement with a lump of tissue (ones brain) that does not itself have the capacity to make use of entanglement (or the like) itself. As such there are things that are beyond the resolution of our reasoning organ.
What is kind of exciting is the idea that we might build a machine that is not so limited to harvest the impact of these incomprehensible quantum events. Much like we have build machines to exceed the mechanical limits of our physical bodies (cars, cranes, planes etc). It will be weird though when we start to rely on machines that are using results that the machines cannot explain to us because our brains are inadequate.
"The first thing to do when you find yourself in a hole is stop digging."
I'd guess they just mean the local cluster of galaxies, that is, the group of galaxies around us that we are gravitationally bound to. It's been known for a while that the Milky Way is larger than average, but Andromeda (which we are on a collision course with) was thought to be larger than us. I'm skeptical, myself, but it would be awesome if we did turn out to be bigger. 'Cause that kind of thing is cool.