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

We Impress Me

[TheLazySci-FiAuthor]

Is it just me, or are humans getting better and better at science as time progresses?

I mean, it seems likely that this would be the case, naturally. Nonetheless, it still strikes me.

We predict dark matter exists, then we show it exists. It seems pretty much assured that we will even find out what it is made of. This discovery further cements this feeling in my mind.

We figure there is a chemical of inheritance, we find DNA. We know there is a genome, we sequence it.

Everything seems to be a big puzzle, and we seem to be getting faster and more accurate with putting these puzzles together.

I feel fully confident in speculating, for instance, that we will solve the gene therapy issues in mere years. That we will have household humanoid robots by 2020 for under $50,000US. That we will enhance ourselves dramatically genetically and technologically by the end of the century.

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

Re:We Impress Me

[TheLazySci-FiAuthor]

it's easier than reading the Old Testament

Well, that's a ringing endorsement for a book if I've ever heard one ;)

I feel the same about our progress being both wonderful and dangerous. I am reading Asimovs' robot novels right now, and in a forward he made a deeply profound observation. Let me google it for accuracy...

"Even as a youngster, I could not bring myself to believe that if knowledge presented danger, the solution was ignorance. To me, it always seemed that the solution had to be wisdom."

I wonder if we are becoming as good at aquiring wisdom as we are knowledge...I'm an optimist, so I think so.

But what is truly the wiser stance, optimism or pessimism?

I would say optimism, because pessimism tastes terrible - and it's unwise to eat things that taste bad ;)