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Dark Matter Filament Finally Found
An anonymous reader writes "Everyone is talking about the recent Higgs boson announcement by the scientists at CERN, but another significant scientific discovery was revealed this week as well. In a study published online in the journal Nature on Wednesday, scientists show that they have successfully found the first dark matter filament."
http://www.space.com/16412-dark-matter-filament-galaxy-clusters.html
Futurama fans already know that that filament is a result of Nibblonian diarrhea being ejected into space.
My kingdom for a donkey!
what colour are they ?
The dark lightbulb. The darkbulb?
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
First of all, don't go to "page 2" and I use that term loosely. Secondly, it doesn't mention a single scientific detail about how they determined that the light was being bent around a filament-shaped object compared to the starts behind it actually being in the location the light suggests. It merely states "They used a model to subtract out the masses of the galaxy clusters and then fit the remaining mass with a model of what a filament might look like. They found that a filament must be present." So in other words, they didn't find anything other than a mathematical equation suggesting dark matter exists. Congratuations are in order indeed.
Okay, so even assuming the light-bending is real, what's their evidence that it's dark matter and not simply non-luminous normal matter? I can see something like the bullet cluster strongly supports dark matter versus alternative theories (e.g. using general relativity rather than Newtonian gravitational theory apparently explains the odd galactic rotational characteristics ) since the vast bulk of matter appears to have passed through without interacting. Then again , should the dark matter have "collided" almost as hard? It's not like we're talking about direct star-on-star collisions, it's all gravitational interaction, in which case dark matter should play by pretty much the same rules, assuming it's actually matter.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Aha, someone posted a hair bit of time ahead of me a much better article so let me ammend that with the short version:
There are 2 galaxies kinda far apart but they're really overlapped from Earth's point of view. Like one is almost entirely behind the other. So the back galaxy's light passes along where the filament would be estimated to be between the galaxies. So the light travels through the dark matter's gravitational field for a really long time, running practically parallel to the filament. Even after that much light gravity tugging, it's barely perceptable by our current telescopes. So someone had some pics of this set of galaxies from 2001 but never did anything with them because they didn't realize the opportunity. This new team noticed it, compared it to background light to detect additional possible lensing, and discovered unmistakeable slight lensing. So something is obviously there and it has to be a particular shape, density, and reflect no light.
... but why aren't these scientists trying to find something useful, like where the hell all my odd socks go?
Dark Matter was proven decades ago as this following article demonstrates.
Bell Labs Proves Existence of Dark Suckers
For years it has been believed that electric bulbs emitted light. However, recent information from Bell Labs has proven otherwise. Electric bulbs don't emit light, they suck dark. Thus they now call these bulbs dark suckers. The dark sucker theory, according to a Bell Labs spokesperson, proves the existence of dark, that dark has mass heavier than that of light, and that dark is faster than light.
The basis of the dark sucker theory is that electric bulbs suck dark. Take for example, the dark suckers in the room where you are. There is less dark
right next to them than there is elsewhere. The larger the dark sucker, the greater its capacity to suck dark. Dark suckers in a parking lot have a
much greater capacity than the ones in this room. As with all things, dark suckers don't last forever. Once they are full of dark, they can no longer suck. This is proven by the black spot on a full dark sucker. A candle is a primitive dark sucker. A new candle has a white wick. You will notice that after the first use, the wick turns black, representing all the dark which
has been sucked into it. If you hold a pencil next to the wick of an operating candle, the tip will turn black because it got in the path of the dark flowing into the candle.
Unfortunately, these primitive dark suckers have a very limited range. There are also portable dark suckers. The bulbs in these can't handle all
of the dark by themselves, and must be aided by a dark storage unit. When the dark storage unit is full, it must be either emptied or replaced before
the portable dark sucker can operate again.
Dark has mass. When dark goes into a dark sucker, friction from this mass generates heat. Thus it is not wise to touch an operating dark sucker.
Candles present a special problem, as the dark must travel in the solid wick instead of through glass. This generates a great amount of heat. Thus it can be very dangerous to touch an operating candle. Dark is also heavier than light. If you swim deeper and deeper, you notice it gets slowly darker
and darker. When you reach a depth of approximately fifty feet, you are in total darkness. This is because the heavier dark sinks to the bottom of the lake and the lighter light floats to the top. The immense power of dark can be utilized to mans advantage. We can collect the dark that has settled to the bottom of lakes and push it through turbines, which generate electricity and help push it to the ocean where it may be safely stored.
Prior to turbines, it was much more difficult to get dark from the rivers and lakes to the ocean. The Indians recognized this problem, and tried to
solve it. When on a river in a canoe travelling in the same direction as the flow of the dark, they paddled slowly, so as not to stop the flow of dark, but when they traveled against the flow of dark, they paddled quickly so as to help push the dark along its way.
Finally, we must prove that dark is faster than light. If you were to stand in an illuminated room in front of a closed, dark closet, then slowly open the closet door, you would see the light slowly enter the closet, but since the dark is so fast, you would not be able to see the dark leave the closet.
In conclusion, Bell Labs stated that dark suckers make all our lives much easier. So the next time you look at an electric bulb remember that it is indeed a dark sucker.
This has already been considered, but the current cosmological models and experimental evidence requires that the majority of dark matter be non-baryonic, i.e. composed of particles that are incapable of forming atoms and thence stars and planets.
And it turned out that it was made of what we long suspected the mising mass of the universe wa composed of: AOL discs.
Well, except that if 80% of the mass in our galaxy was simply non-luminous, we'd still see the "haze" from it, just as we can see evidence of the existing hydrogen haze by it's characteristic absorbtion spectra, especially when starlight passes through nebula where the diffuse matter density is extremely high. Perhaps the vast majority simply formed gas giants and the like that were two small to "ignite", recent evidence does suggest wandering planets may be far more common than star-bound ones, but to get the 5:1 ratio still we'd be talking about 5000 Jupiters for every sun, and the sun is actually pretty tiny as stars go - with that many dark planets whizzing around it seems likely we'd see some evidence of them, likely of the frequent "Gas giant zooms through solar system, multiple planetary orbits disrupted, news at 11" sort. If the planets were smaller the "invasions" would be even more frequent, and if they were much larger (we're not sure of the exact limit) they'd spontaneously ignite
Then again - if using general relativity rather than Newtonian gravity actually does explain the odd rotational characteristics of our galaxy without reliance on massive amounts of additional matter then you may be right. There's still things like the Bullet Cluster that show evidence of something very weird going on though - the gravitational lensing seems to have become partially disconnected from the visible matter - if "dark matter" was simply non-luminous you would expect it to still have distribution and gravitational-collision properties similar to the glowing stuff, which is not the case there. Whatever is causing the lensing is behaving in a manner fundamentally different than the matter we can see, in fact it appears to be largely unaffected by the collision at all, which would seem to at odds with many "simple" dark matter theories as well (i.e. it's like normal matter, except light passes right through it).
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
I'd call this bigger than the Higgs.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
I want to see a pig-tail bulb, one of those compact fluorescent-types with dark-matter instead of mercury, so when I flip on the switch, the room is plunged into darkness, even if it's noon and the drapes are open. That'd be cool for a darkroom or a home-theater. Especially useful if you can make a flashlight... excuse me, I mean a flashdark out of it, so you can blind people with darkness in tactical situations. You can blind them with super-bright light, but on a dark night, it kinda gives away your position to anyone not close-enough to blind. A flashdark would not, it would just suck up the beam from the sentry's flashlight, maybe even making him think it had gone out. As he points it at his own face, tapping it against his free-hand, you point the flashdark away from him, and he blinds himself. Then you use your flashdark again to sneak past him while his eyes are dazzled and he's drooling incoherently (yes, you can be messed up enough to pull that off, but it takes WORK,) trying to figure out why his own flashlight stabbed his eyes out.
Tip-toeing quietly, you can slip right by undetected. Pretty cool application of new discoveries, wouldn't you say?
In a world where people are only comforted by thinking they understand how the universe works I'm totally fascinated by the unexplainable. It boggles my mind that people couldn't believe in 'invisible' mass. Furthermore, I look forward to what organisms may exist in that phase. Maybe Deadmau5's got it. Ghosts n stuff.
Higgs was pretty much a given. All that CERN did was confirm it. OTOH, Dark matter occupies a large amount of the universe and yet, we have not found it. So, the question is, is this real?
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
My grasp of science is somewhat tenuous at best, but wouldn't all matter collapse into a common gravitational center?
For example, wouldn't a nebula-sized cloud of free electrons still collapse under their gravitational influence?
-- Cisk for the Cisk God
You must be a Fox News watcher.
Because you are so fucking arrogant as to think that you who obviously don't know shit about cosmology, astronomy, or astrophysics, would think that you know better than people who have been working for years, some their entire lifetime. Seriously if you had one fucking class on the subject you would know that cold regular matter absorbs light, so it can still be directly observed like a shadow.
So how about stop assuming that you know more about physics than the physicists, and try and learn something?
It's like a sophomore project in universe design class. A way-too-slow hard-coded top speed, lots of localized buffer overflows without proper error handling or anything (Too much mass in one place should at LEAST throw an exception,) particles popping in and out of existence all the time, and the whole thing is held together by duck tape and dark matter. Honestly, I might give this universe a "C"... if I was feeling generous.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Going right out on I-am-not-a-astrophysicist limb here, but since the electrons are all negatively charged they would repel each other and isn't gravity the weakest force? Nevertheless I'm probably completely wrong and I think your question is still basically a good one. Doesn't matter lead to gravity the way love leads to marriage?
To the morons that claim dark matter is just another search for the aether
Now maybe they can help me find my keys.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Some explanations of dark matter say that most of the gravitational effects are from dark energy, not condensed into matter. But if dark matter differs from other matter in that it doesn't absorb or emit light, how does dark energy differ from other energy? Energy doesn't absorb or emit light, so how is dark energy different? Unless they mean that it doesn't get absorbed or emitted as light, the way other energy does (ie. photon beams). Without that property it seems rather unlike other energy, enough that it's not really energy.
And if it is dark energy, then where is all the cold, dark info? The next more subtle form of existants.
--
make install -not war
And I was so sure that it would be found between Rush Limbaugh's ears. Oh well.
They are also under the influence of all the masses around them for their entire existence, like everything else. That's why all the Universe's matter is not clumped together in an infinitely massive, infinitesimally small point, but is spread through the Universe in wisps, clumps and intertwined folds. They're also subject to electrostatic repulsion, and the effects of the other fundamental forces, among the rest of matter, space, energy and other forms of what exists not yet categorized.
--
make install -not war
Doesn't matter lead to gravity the way love leads to marriage?
Indeed, once married, gravity doesn't matter any more, with pregnancy, mortgage, kids' school, etc becoming more critical. Gravity starts to matter again closer to retirement age, but then manifests itself more like a burden.
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
first post
Dark post; doesn't matter.
If this one isn't announced in Comic Sans, this is the superior discovery
I was tempted to suggest that so-called "dark matter" might in fact turn out to be the supersymmetric twin of the neutrino. (Neutrino: nearly massless; practically no interaction with normal matter. Dark matter: entirely massive, practically no interaction with normal matter.)
Then I remembered that the velocity of a neutrino is nearly that of the speed of light, or the maximum velocity in this universe. Thus, I reasoned, the velocity of dark matter must approach zero.
This theoretical prediction has clearly been refuted by experimental evidence.
Oh, that and the fact that all varieties of neutrinos already have had their supersymmetric partners identified...
"For example, wouldn't a nebula-sized cloud of free electrons still collapse under their gravitational influence?"
Hell, no. Gravity is orders of magnitude weaker than electrical repulsion. A cloud of electrons would disperse, not coalesce.
Gravity is even weaker than the so-called "weak" force in quantum physics. It is the weakest of all.
... for shedding some light on this.
So, you go tell the student that, the guy is unstable in the extreem! Wiped out an entire planet just because people wouldn't listen to him. Imagine what he do with a professor that gives him a C. Would be a sight to see. Preferably from another universe.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
One thing that this isn't, is the detection of dark matter. What they've discovered is another cosmic something which is consistent with the existence of dark matter.
They started with another example of visible matter behaving inconsistently with the amount detected.
They then
(1a) assumed that dark matter exists
(1b) hypothesised for the sake of argument that the observed inconsistency is caused by dark matter;
(2) attempted to deduce the arrangement of that dark matter needed to produce the observed inconsistency;
(3) and found that they were able to reach a solution.
What that means is that the hypothesis, that the "missing" mass is present as some form of dark matter" is not inconsistent with the data. It does NOT mean that dark matter exists, or that they've found an example; it's a weaker result than that. And anything that goes further and claims that they've found dark matter, when their whole argument includes the assumption that dark matter exists, is circular reasoning.
Two further things are needed before dark matter can be claimed as detected.
Firstly, more examples, none of which are inconsistent with dark matter being the cause.
Second (and more important but rather harder), an acceptable mathematical demonstration that inconsistent results are possible with a reasonably high level of probability if dark matter doesn't exist. In other words, it's not good showing lots of examples that fit the theory and holding them up as evidence, if it can be shown that any old data will always fit the theory. Because science demands the possibility of disproof.
Working ballpoint pens would get used, so they do not get an opportunity to cluster together and reproduce. All working ballpoint pens are, in fact, the sterile offspring of all the non-working ones, just as mules are the sterile working offspring of horses and donkeys...hay fever acting up, please forgive this OT post.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
The top quark has a mass of about 173GeV, which comfortably beats the 125 of the particle detected at CERN.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
To parahrase Feynmans answer to magnets, how do they work? that was taped long before the question became popular.
At the bottom of every rabbit hole is an explicit assumption. You just have to accept these fundemental assumptions as fact until someone comes along and peels another layer off the onion, assuming there is another layer? You can identify these explicit assumptions fairly easily because they cannot be described by anything more fundemental than themselves therefore all current descriptions of these fundemental properties of the universe are self referencing (or as Feynman put it "cheating"). Dark matter, gravity, spacetime, etc, are examples of these fundemental properties (slashdot challenge: try to come up with a description of a fundemental force or property of the universe that is not self referencing).
Modern physics accepts that we have no idea how these fundemental properties "work", like the universe itself they "just are". This is the "faith" part of science that confuses the hell out of religious and atheistic people alike, science (Natural philososphy) requires the "faith that the real world exists", it answers the proverbial "tree falling in the forest" question with a self-confident - yes! However all is not lost since we do know a hell of a lot about how these fundemental "miricales' behave, so faith in science is not blind faith, it is a faith that's deeply rooted in the utility of the results. ie: we have labeled our best description of this previously unobserved behaviour of the universe as "dark matter" in a way that is consistent with our current understanding of how the universe behaves.
Dark matter is therefore simply the label for the description of what we observe. If it suggest new observations via predictions then great, if it gets them right even better, but even though you have leant a lot more about how it behaves, you still don't actually know what dark matter is ( I particularly like clip for his sly one finger salute to book burning priests at ~2:42).
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
You're not the first AC to cut thier own throat with Occam's razor, and you won't be the last.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
wouldn't all matter collapse into a common gravitational center?
Yes, assuming it's not ripped apart by the expansion of space and assuming there is enough mass in the cloud for gravity to eventually dominate the other forces. Note that some of these filiments are long enough that the two ends are not gavitationally bound (due to the exansion of space).
As I understand it the reason that DM comes in filaments between galaxies rather than seperate blobs has something to do with quantum fluctuations when our observable universe was compresed into a point particle, it also appears that the bulk of the normal matter (galaxy clusters) occurs where these filaments meet (although I don't know of a explaination as to why), the rest of the normal matter (lone galaxies and primordial gas) coincides with the dark matter filaments. In simplistic terms the matter in the universe is arranged like swiss cheese but the space containing the cheese is expanding to rapidly for the cheese to sucumb to gravity and lump together at a central point. Supercomputer models of the 14Gyr evolution of the universe that include dark matter are consistent with observations, models that only use normal matter are not as skillfull in reproducing ALL the observations.
And for all the metaphysics types out there it's been pointed out a map of the universe at the largest scale looks remarkably like the nuron network in a brain
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Normally, all known chemical elements reflect light in one degree or another...so, what is this dark matter made of? what is its chemical composition?
Is it something like that thing in Star Trek Generations ?
last post, damn.. someone beat me to it
Maybe, but the gravity is also the only force which works beyond subatomic distances. It's effect is also additive so enough electrons held together would eventually be massive enough to overcome the electromagnetic repulsion (just like protons).
Weather it's actually possible to condense a cloud of electrons in order for them to exhibit a strong enough gravitational pull, I have no idea.
Pics or it didn't happen!
It's estimated that there are 5 times as many dark posts as regular productive ones.
Stuff that doesn't matter!
Interesting idea. Does anyone know if Mesons (two quarks) or even single quarks (which I've read cannot exist) could be an explanation for dark matter. It would be interesting if a single quark could create a gravitational effect (again very weak) but otherwise have no discernable properties. I'm new to particle physics so if anyone has info on this I would love to hear.
All glory to the Hypnotoad!
Maybe, but the gravity is also the only force which works beyond subatomic distances.
Electromagnetism is not short-range. It only seems like it is normally because most materials are electrically neutral.
It's effect is also additive so enough electrons held together would eventually be massive enough to overcome the electromagnetic repulsion (just like protons).
Yes, it's being additive which is why gravity dominates the large-scale structure of the universe (not accounting for dark energy). Electromagnetism likes to cancel out, while gravity likes to build and build.
Weather it's actually possible to condense a cloud of electrons in order for them to exhibit a strong enough gravitational pull, I have no idea.
I don't think so, since the cloud wouldn't exist in the first place. It would disperse long before there was anything like a 'cloud'.
However if you started with something else, like a cloud of hydrogen gas, that could condense, eventually creating a situation where gravity has overcome the electron's repulsion. Something like what our sun will become.
These kinds of objects don't make good dark matter candidates. At least for the majority of the unseen mass, and the observations supporting its existence.
The enemies of Democracy are
The problem is that they've not defined enough properties of dark matter in order for "it's consistent with our model of dark matter" to actually mean much. I guess that gets funding and press interest more quickly than "it's consistent with our current inability to explain everything we see exactly under the widely accepted model".
As there's supposed to be way more invisible stuff then visible stuff, why has nobody seen evidence of visible stuff in orbit around invisible stuff? We've seen plenty of visible stuff in orbit around visible stuff, there should be more visible stuff in orbit around invisible stuff. We've seen plenty of visible stuff smash into and be ripped up by visible stuff - where's the visible stuff that's smashing into invisible stuff, or vice versa? Shouldn't there be more of that happening if there's more invisible stuff than visible stuff? Where is it, if it's so prevalent? With all the properties they've ascribed to it (having way more mass than all the visible stuff in the universe), it should surely be making itself more obvious.
There needs to be an equivalent of profmattstrassler.com for Dark Matter.
Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863
Oh Man, we are one of the smallest parts of gods neural network (brain) trying to figure himself out /mind blown/
Yes, it's being additive which is why gravity dominates the large-scale structure of the universe (not accounting for dark energy). Electromagnetism likes to cancel out, while gravity likes to build and build.
Actually, althought net charge generally cancels out at large scales, currents and electromagnetic fields likely don't. The argument in the past has generally been that if there are large charge differences they will flow to cancel out. While this does happen, the flow is a current which creates a magnetic field so that when the charges are all finally neutralized, the magnetic field collapses and continues to drive the current. Same principle as a relaxation oscillator but on huge scales. We have observed plasma filaments carrying currents within our solar system and with the vast amount of plasma in the universe and it's excellent conductivity it would seem naive to assume that this wouldn't extend to larger scales. Large scale computer models using Maxwell's equations and the known laws governing plasma show galactic rotation curves that match observation without the need for 'Dark Mater', and unlike 'Dark Mater' or 'Dark Energy', these laws are experimentally verifiable and reproducible in the lab).
IMHO, the assumption that all electromagnetic effects can be ignored at large scales has led us down the ever more bizarre path of Dark Mater, Dark Energy, Cosmic Strings, etc. and many scientists are finally seeing the mountain of evidence that is building to overthrow that assumption. We can see magnetic effects on the sun where massive currents and fields produce CMEs, sunspots are known to be magentically produced phenomena, x-ray emmisions from commets show they have a direct high voltage electrical interaction with the solar environment, ...
I should have added that even though protons are HUGELY more massive than electrons, given that they have similar charges they would disperse, too.
People tend to think of gravity as strong because that is usually the greatest force they observe day-to-day. But they are very much mistaken, and if they thought about it, they would realize that even casual static electricity is much stronger than gravity.
As far as I know (IANAP), dark matter is supposed to be "warm", that is, it is supposed to have enough energy that it doesn't concentrate on bodies, like barionic matter do.
Now, of course, the problem with that is that if dark matter is warm, it must be light, and we should have already found it on accelerators. But cold dark matter has several theoretical problems.
Or, in other words. Yeah, our understanting of the Universe has some deep flaws.
Rethinking email
Only 5?
what to do if it revolts ?
Free speech was meant to be free for all... how can anyone grow up in a nanny state ?