Slashdot Mirror
Possible Dark Matter Signal Spotted
TaleSlinger sends this news from Space.com:
Astronomers may finally have detected a signal of dark matter, the mysterious and elusive stuff thought to make up most of the material universe. While poring over data collected by the European Space Agency's XMM-Newton spacecraft, a team of researchers spotted an odd spike in X-ray emissions coming from two different celestial objects — the Andromeda galaxy and the Perseus galaxy cluster.
"The signal's distribution within the galaxy corresponds exactly to what we were expecting with dark matter — that is, concentrated and intense in the center of objects and weaker and diffuse on the edges," [assuming that dark matter consists of sterile neutrinos] study co-author Oleg Ruchayskiy, of the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland, said in a statement. "With the goal of verifying our findings, we then looked at data from our own galaxy, the Milky Way, and made the same observations," added lead author Alexey Boyarsky, of EPFL and Leiden University in the Netherlands. The decay of sterile neutrinos is thought to produce X-rays, so the research team suspects these may be the dark matter particles responsible for the mysterious signal coming from Andromeda and the Perseus cluster."
"The signal's distribution within the galaxy corresponds exactly to what we were expecting with dark matter — that is, concentrated and intense in the center of objects and weaker and diffuse on the edges," [assuming that dark matter consists of sterile neutrinos] study co-author Oleg Ruchayskiy, of the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland, said in a statement. "With the goal of verifying our findings, we then looked at data from our own galaxy, the Milky Way, and made the same observations," added lead author Alexey Boyarsky, of EPFL and Leiden University in the Netherlands. The decay of sterile neutrinos is thought to produce X-rays, so the research team suspects these may be the dark matter particles responsible for the mysterious signal coming from Andromeda and the Perseus cluster."
Much more important than the obsession with proving that it is dark matter and not a limit of the relativity models, we'd actually have a real name for the stuff.
"Dark matter" was a lame filler term from day one. If it turns out to be abundant masses of sterile neutrinos, then we can all go look up what "sterile" means in regards to a particle type that is already infamous for ignoring everything else until it rams into a proton or neutron in a head-on crash.
Does this basic principle of scientific inquiry not apply to cosmology????
Go on then, what's the simpler explanation?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Perseus?
It's Omicron Persei 8 complaining about the cancellation of Single Female Lawyer.
The paper on which the space.com article is based is almost year old. It appeared in February 2014. Why is this piece of old news here ?
The decay of sterile neutrinos is thought to produce X-rays, so the research team suspects these may be the dark matter particles responsible for the mysterious signal coming from Andromeda and the Perseus cluster."
Back in my days, every mysterious signal from every star system follows a well rehearsed routine. People get beamed down, they see even more mysterious things happen and finally they get everything resolved and are back in the Enterprise in 46 minutes, all set up and ready to boldly go where no man had gone before. Come on, resolve it already scientists. Whats the matter with you lazy bums?
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
I think sterile neutrinos are among the least-exotic explanations that hasn't been ruled out yet. Still, I'd love more information here: Why hasn't this been seen before? What theories predict x-rays at these energies? What kinds of confirmation are feasable?
Oops wish I could self-edit. The paper is short and easy to read. It answers pretty much all these questions.
This is really old news (at least in the particle physics cycle) and over a 100 papers have been written about this already. This is one of many papers that points out serious problems with a dark matter interpretation for this signal http://arxiv.org/abs/1408.1699 and here's a less technical blog post discussing the issues http://resonaances.blogspot.co... . I'm sick of pop-sci websites peddling stuff that particle physicists have already moved on from as the "latest exciting discovery"
A wizard did it! No, wait, this is slashdot... ahm.. electric universe!
Keep in mind that what information comes out of journalists is typically 10 times more outrageous than any of the scientists' claims.
I can only wonder how the researchers arrived at their conclusion when there are so very many other sources of X-rays in the universe. In fact if you were looking far dark matter you would ignore any signal coming from a galaxy and only look for signals coming from *outside* the galaxy, which is where dark matter is believed to exist.
You sound like the kind of guy who goes around the neighborhood putting penises on all the snowmen.
That's a lot better than the guy who goes around putting a penis in all the snowmen...
You have the right to remain sentient. If you give up the right to remain sentient, you will be elected to public office
Nibbler?
The decay of sterile neutrinos is thought to produce X-rays, so the research team suspects these may be the dark matter particles responsible for the mysterious signal coming from Andromeda and the Perseus cluster.
Would these sterile neutrinos be all the dark matter that models hypothesize? Or only one subset of it?
Unless the decay rate is very low, the x-ray flux from something that makes up the majority of the matter in our universe could cook everything nearby.
Have gnu, will travel.
It does. That is why dark matter is the leading theory at the moment. It is the simplest one, with the least additional elements, that can actually explain all available observations.
There are plenty of simpler theories that can't, though, if you prefer things that are known to be wrong.
I always liked the idea of invisible virtual springs, it makes the universe seem steampunk.
It's black sheep, in an interstellar coal mine, with dark matter flashlights.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Says AC so inept that he cannot begin a sentence with a capitalized word, actually spell "dark matter" or end his sentence with a period.
Not to mention it's a bloody AC who has indicated no level of expertise in physics or cosmology.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
That post, especially the first three lines:
Astronomer A: "Do you see anything in the telescope eyepiece?"
Astronomer B: "Nope. Nothing."
Astronomer A: "Yaaay! That means WE discovered Dark Matter!"
could almost have come from a 1950s British radio comedy series "The Goon Show", which might - or might not - mean anything on the western side of the Atlantic: Wikipedia says NBC broadcasted it from the mid-1950s, and that it exercised a considerable influence on the subsequent development of British and American comedy and popular culture, for example the Beatles, Monty Python, and the American comedy team The Firesign Theatre. An example of the writing is the piece of paper" sketch.
You keep saying that and the next 10' x 10' room will have 50,000 orcs with uzis in it (and a chest with 3 copper pieces).
Who is John Cabal?
For all we know, it could have been Stephen Hawking behind that AC.