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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."
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
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"
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.
It's probably because they're better qualified in physics than you are.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
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
By now you must know the denizens of /. are leading lights in fields as diverse as biology, geology, climatology, economics and physics. It's a goddamned wonder that half the posters here don't have Nobel prizes in their back pockets.
And yet, generous souls that they are, they still have time to complain about Ruby on Rails. We truly live in an age of giants!
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
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 not a bad thing to be extra cautious around buzz words. Dark Matter feels like a fudge factor for our ability to observe the universe or our models of it. Hey, these numbers don't add up- just stick in another variable. Is it more likely that there is a magic unobservable substance that makes our models correct or that our models need tuning?
X
Is it more likely that there is a magic unobservable substance that makes our models correct or that our models need tuning?
Yes.
It's not a bad thing to be extra cautious around buzz words.
Dark matter isn't a buzz word, at least not to the people who are actually trying to discover if it exists, and what it is. It's a hypothesis, or a class of hypotheses.
Dark Matter feels like a fudge factor for our ability to observe the universe or our models of it.
You could say that about anything that was hypothesised before it was confirmed - the atomic nucleus, photons, quantum mechanics.
Hey, these numbers don't add up- just stick in another variable.
And then see if the new model is a better match for observations, work out if there are any other consequences of the new variable, search for experimental evidence of those consequences... AKA science.
Is it more likely that there is a magic unobservable substance that makes our models correct or that our models need tuning?
That the model needs tuning is already given, because we've got observations that the model can't explain, so there's no "or" about it. The "magic unobservable substance" seems to be the best explanation anyone's been able to come up with so far.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.