Hubble Space Telescope Detects Ring of Dark Matter

mknewman wrote with a link to a story on the NASA site indicating that they may have finally found dark matter using the Hubble telescope. We've discussed the stuff a few times in the last year, with the Hubble actually mapping out the dark matter in the universe in January. This, though, may be our first 'sighting' of the elusive substance. "NASA will hold a media teleconference at 1 p.m. EDT on May 15 to discuss the strongest evidence to date that dark matter exists. This evidence was found in a ghostly ring of dark matter in the cluster CL0024+17, discovered using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. The ring is the first detection of dark matter with a unique structure different from the distribution of both the galaxies and the hot gas in the cluster. The discovery will be featured in the June 20 issue of the Astrophysical Journal."

Comments

The Telescope Nobody Wanted..

[QuantumG]

except, of course, all the astrophysicists who often pointed out that exactly this kind of discovery was just around the corner.

Re:We Impress Me

[rts008]

"Has science always been this inexorable in it's progress?"

I don't beleive so. My take on it:

Timely communication over wide areas has started the 'inexonerable progress'. Telegraph, railroads, telephones, 2-way radio,and now the internet have boosted progress dramatically as each were implemented.

I may be wrong, but the concept you seem to be looking for is 'singularity'. It's happening quicker as time goes- like a snowball rolling downhill, it may not reach the bottom of the hill (true singularity), but it's headed that way.

Typical

[malsdavis]

Why does the title read "Hubble Space Telescope Detects Ring of Dark Matter" when - as the first line of the summary states -, the HST actually only " may have finally found dark matter".

"Has found" and "may have found" are very different things. I "may have" the lotto ticket which is going to win me millions of dollars in Saturday's draw; on the other hand, I may not. To pre-emptively state a conclusion before it has been made is foolish and extremely unscientific and simply not an accurate description.

We predict luminiferous aether

[vlad_petric]

We find no luminiferous aether.

Not all scientific predictions are made equal.

Re:We predict luminiferous aether

[Lijemo]

"We find no luminiferous aether.
Not all scientific predictions are made equal."

that was a very useful prediction.

We predicted luminous aether: it was a logical theory. We had good reason to believe that light was a wave, we had no reason to imagine that a wave could exist without a physical medium (air, water, etc.)

It was a falsifiable theory.

For a long time people tried to prove it, but measurements weren't sensitive enough. Finally, a sensitive enough experiment was developed, and it found-- nothing!

This was far more useful than if they had found something.

On discovering that the theory was wrong, they didn't try to argue that it was really still correct. They puzzled about what it could mean: how can a wave exist without a substance to wave through?

Many incredibly significant scientific advances of the next few decades came out of this enigma. If there had been no luniniferous aether theory, there would have been no enigma, and perhaps many of these discoveries would not yet have come about.

The usefulness of a theory is not in whether it's correct or not. The usefulness of a theory comes from what you learn while trying to discover whether or not it is correct.