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Most Detailed View of Dark Matter Mapped By Hubble

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the final-frontier dept.

astroengine writes "Building on previous studies by the Hubble Space Telescope, new analysis of gravitational lensing data has revealed the most detailed map of the distribution of dark matter yet. The distribution appears as a beautiful ghost-like or ethereal haze and could have serious ramifications on our understanding as to how galaxy clusters form and evolve."

6 of 93 comments (clear)

  1. Just a question by Burnhard · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I'm just asking the question, because I don't have a great deal of knowledge about this, but could an alternative explanation be that our theory of gravity is wrong?

    1. Re:Just a question by Monkeedude1212 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I'm just asking the question, because I don't have a great deal of knowledge about this, but could an alternative explanation be that our theory of gravity is wrong?

      Kind of.

      In all other experiments, our understanding of Gravity works just fine. In this one situation however, it does not. Someone proposes the idea of Dark Matter - which fits the bill almost perfectly, as it accounts for what we've seen.

      Alternatively, our understanding is wrong. We don't know how its wrong, or why its wrong, it's just not working. When we look at hundreds of other examples, it works. When we look at this one, it doesn't.

      Is it more plausible to discount our theory based on the 1 case where it doesn't hold up, or assume there is something special about that one case that seperates it from the others.

      Thats why Dark Matter holds some water. But - by all means, it is entirely possible that we don't have it quite right, we could be missing some variables that simply are negligable at a non-cosmic scale.

    2. Re:Just a question by Steve+Blake · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Sorry, wrong URL for the Moffat paper on the Bullet Cluster; see http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0702146/.

  2. They're ruining it for all of us. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Building this map may result in the shortening of the life span of the universe.

    1. Re:They're ruining it for all of us. by MozeeToby · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I understand the science journalist not understanding, but does the qualified physicist really not understand the difference between an 'observer' in the traditional sense and an observer in the quantum sense? All of the things that we detect with our advanced technology effect things throughout the universe whether we are looking at them or not, the things that they effect are observers. A grain of dust around a star that is given an every so slightly different orbit because of quantum effects is just as much an 'observer' as a human being looking through a telescope is.

  3. Re:At the risk of making scientists cringe... by AstrumPreliator · · Score: 2, Interesting

    As someone who has studied algebraic geometry quite a bit I find the jump from classical mechanics to relativity to be very beautiful mathematically. The former is still useful as the approximation is close enough for the majority of situations, but it did unwittingly make some assumptions which turned out to be wrong. To me dark matter and dark energy seem like a kludge and I do hope we just unwittingly made some assumptions about the system that turn out to be false. Of course that's just the mathematician in me, always searching for perfection. Dark matter and dark energy may very well be real, I'm not a physicist.