Slashdot Mirror
Astronomers Make Important Dark Matter Discovery
saudadelinux writes "To quote a press release on NASA's site, astronomers using the Chandra X-ray Observatory have discovered 'how dark and normal matter have been forced apart in an extraordinarily energetic collision.' There will be a briefing at noon, August 21 ET, on this discovery, with streaming media provided by NASA, and some details of the research posted on Harvard's Chandra site just beforehand."
How about waiting for the 21st and THEN posting a story. There is literally nothing of substance yet. Oh wait, this is Slashdot. We'll just have it posted again in two days, then on the 21st, then on the 25th, etc.
Someone's giving us ADVANCE NOTICE on Slashdot and you're COMPLAINING?!?!?!
I can't count how many times I've read something on Slashdot about something cool that's already happened, just barely, and said "Once again, information I could have put to much better use YESTERDAY!!!
Zonk, pay no attention to the criticism; I for one WELCOME some in-advance info (might even vote for it for "overlord"...)
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"And this is different from believing in God... how, exactly?"
We look for explanations of what's going on, not just saying "it's God. Don't go there." Think of dark matter as a placeholder, not the end product. Over time, we should find a reasonable explanation of what's causing the discrepancy, at which point it will just become part of the "normal" physics.
It's never been about how many planets are enough, and it's not just about Pluto. It's about how you define a planet.
It's, in a nutshell, about science: attempting to actually classify and understand the universe. Just proclaiming "ok, I hereby do dub Pluto a planet" is ok for everyday life, but a bit too vague for science. It's like you can talk generically about "radiation" in casual conversation or in super-hero comics, but to a scientist that's uselessly vague. A scientist will be more interested in what _kind_ of radiation (i.e., the exact particle), at what energies, etc.
The same happens in astrophysics. You can't just say "ooh, that's a pretty star", because that doesn't give you much to work with. Is it a planet? An asteroid? A comet? A star? A nova? A white dwarf? What? There are very good reasons to split hairs there, because out of such splitting hairs comes the understanding of what they are and how they work.
E.g., from the splitting of hairs as to how we classify stars came such categories as "white dwarf." In turn, that let us wonder about how big a white dwarf can be, which gave us the Chandrasekhar limit. In turn that told us that when a star goes over (actually it later it turned out that when it's just right under) that limit, it goes *KABOOM* in a spectacular Type Ia supernova. Since it happens at the exact same point, it tells us that every Type Ia supernova is exactly the same as any other one. Which in turn lets us use them to measure distances and velocities in distant galaxies. And from those came a bunch of other astrophysics stuff.
_That_ is why for science it's important to worry about such distinction. Sure, you can get through your everyday life without ever worrying about the difference between Pluto and an asteroid, or between a Type Ia and a Type 1b supernova. But for scientists, it's an entirely different situation.
The informal proclaiming which is what also doesn't scale. When you deal with a whole universe worth of stuff, you have a continuum of things, ranging from individual nuclei all the way to the super-massive black holes in the centre of galaxies. And there are trillions of trillions of them. You can't just go proclaiming for each and every single one of them if it's a planet, an asteroid, or what. You need some rule you can apply there.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Religionists, OTOH, believe in a Supreme Being a priori, and attribute whatever they cannot otherwise explain to the "mysterious ways" of the divine. The edifice of cosmology would withstand the discovery that there is no dark matter. Would religion be able to withstand the discovery that there is no God?
It *is* possible that future advances in astrophysics and cosmology will nullify the dark matter argument. It's just as likely that there *is* some sort of mass carrying matter out that that we have yet to identify. Either way it just shows how much we have left to learn.