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Astronomers Spot Baby Galaxies Cradled In Dark Matter (phys.org)
An anonymous reader writes: Astronomers discovered a nest of monstrous baby galaxies 11.5 billion light-years away using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA). The young galaxies seem to reside at the junction of gigantic filaments in a web of dark matter (abstract). These findings are important for understanding how monstrous galaxies like these are formed and how they evolve in to huge elliptical galaxies. The team found that their young monstrous galaxies seemed to be located right at the intersection of the dark matter filaments. This supports the model that monstrous galaxies form in areas where dark matter is concentrated. And since modern large elliptical galaxies are simply monstrous galaxies which have mellowed with age, they too must have originated at nexuses in the large scale structure.
when they're small.
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Is it not a matter of conjecture that these galaxies are forming in regions where dark matter is concentrated? - a reasonably well-founded conjecture perhaps, but not corroborated by any evidence beyond that which is the basis of the conjecture?
You are all Cows. Cows say Mooo. Mooo! Moooo! Mooooo say the Cows. YOU DARK MATTER COWS!!!!
Monstrous monstrous monstrous. Would someone please get them a thesaurus!
See you disbelievers, God's hands at work can be observed. Amen.
Astronomers have discovered a new level of epicycles in Jupiter's orbit around the Earth.
How are we doing on finding those dark matter filaments that supposedly lurk in our own solar system? Now that New Horizons has uploaded all its Pluto flyby JPGs and is sending the Raws, it could soon perform some experiment that would test this possibility.
If Dark Matter is real, does it produce gravity waves or does it block gravity waves ? I have the troubling suspicion dark matter actively blocks gravity waves , or maybe it's dark energy. Does anyone think there's a link between these unseen forces ?
I was of the impression we detect dark matter indirectly, by the orbital velocities of galaxies and by gravitational lensing effects.
How did we determine that dark matter forms filaments, and how did we map the positions of these filaments?
and doesn't realize that Dark matter doesn't really exist
That's what people used to think about the neutrino, which was a theoretical model until they finally found it decades later.
And that same neutrino is an almost-dark particle, with 1e11 of them going through every square inch of your body, every second, but only about one of them interacting with your atoms every 30 years or so. These ghostly particles are real, so is it that hard to imagine that there may exist even less-interacting particles?
They hate it when you do that!
Left MS Windows for Linux Mint and never looked back!
Vote for Bernie in 2016!
....interesting news though....
But are they monstrous?
Keep in mind that the universe has been expanding for all those years, so we and that galaxy has in essence been 'running' away from each other..
Wouldn't finding evidence of Dark Matter be the real news in this article ? Save from all the conjectures of course...
TFA uses an annoyingly vague term and fails to define it. How large are these galaxies?
This should be interesting...
Without cheating and using a search engine, what do you think dark matter is? No, not what it theoretically is but what it is? Meh, I'll save some time.
Dark matter isn't really *anything* so much as it is *something* and that something is subject to debate. However, it is *something* that we can neither see nor measure. That's where the name comes from. We can see that something is having an effect and, as yet, that somethingremains unknown. But something that we can neither see nor measure is, truly - no doubt about it, causing these effects (known as gravitational lensing).
What that substance is, is very much an unknown. However, for now, that substance (or substances) are called dark matter and is an inclusive term for known and unknown theories. No matter what it turns out to be, it is still dark matter.
Make sense? It's a bit confusing, I guess, but not really if you can get someone to explain it to you well. There are a few competing theories as to what it is, specifically, but the effect is absolutely, certainly, repeatably proven to be there. That effect is caused by something. That something is dark matter. It's a generic term for wont of a better descriptor.
Sorry, I'm not the most articulate but that's a summary as well as I think I can describe it without getting into some maths that won't be supported by the markdown here. I'm not a physicist but I have a layman's background and an almost scholarly interest.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
I've heard it described that if you have a 1 light-year long piece of solid lead and sent a neutrino down it, it would have only a 50% chance to interact with the lead.
I just think you've hit on a particular bugbear for some people, such as CAHutch. They get angry that one of the possible explanations for things like galactic rotation curves is non-baryonic matter that interacts gravitationally but weakly or not at all with other forces. This makes them mad. Don't ask me why. Maybe it exists, maybe it doesn't, CAHutch has made up his mind already and he ain't for budging.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
Pardon my AC reply but I think I'm nearing my post limit for the day. Sadly, no matter how high my karma goes, I'm limited at 50 posts per day. Judging by the stats, we all are and I can go no further.
That said, I think you're right. I don't know what it is - otherwise smart people go crazy and assume that Dark Matter is something it isn't. No, whatever it turns out to be - it's Dark Matter. (Unless I'm missing something?) It could be purple unicorn farts causing the effect that is being seen and those purple unicorn farts will be Dark Matter. It can be one thing, it can be several things, it can be something we've not even imagined yet but the fact is - the effect is taking place, repeatable, verifiable, and is beyond doubt (with any sane interpretation of doubt - call it beyond reasonable doubt).
One interesting conclusion... I should make note of this thread. In a few places, I've taken the time to respond and explain, as best as I can, why it is that they're seemingly not understanding this. I'm a mathematician, not a physicist, and I'm not that articulate but I think I've done an acceptable job. Not one person has responded to say thank you and expressed interest in changing their mind. Not one has refuted my claims. I should note this thread so that I can return here later and see who continues to make these claims in a separate thread at a later date.
Alas, I'm lazy and will probably waste my posts on more frivolous things. We're generally a bunch of geeks here who like things like physics and astrophysics. It's one of the reasons that I come here. I enjoy the posts from people who are smarter than I and I learn. I'm not sure what happened. :(
I ain't exactly made up my mind yet, but given a choice between Dark Matter and "Some other explanation" I think that some other explanation is much more likely. What angers me is articles like this that accept Dark Matter as a given. The article mater of factly states that Dark Matter is present in these Galaxy formations when in fact there is no way for them to know that since there is no way to detect dark matter.