Most Detailed View of Dark Matter Mapped By Hubble

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."

Comments

Just a question

[Burnhard]

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?

Re:Just a question

[Monkeedude1212]

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.

They're ruining it for all of us.

[Anonymous Coward]

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