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Vera Rubin, Pioneering Astronomer Who Confirmed Existence of Dark Matter, Dies At 88 (www.cbc.ca)
Mikkeles quotes a report from CBC.ca: Vera Rubin, a pioneering astronomer who helped find powerful evidence of dark matter, has died, her son said Monday. She was 88. Vera Rubin found that galaxies don't quite rotate the way they were predicted, and that lent support to the theory that some other force was at work, namely dark matter. Rubin's scientific achievements earned her numerous awards and honors, including a National Medal of Science presented by then-president Bill Clinton in 1993 "for her pioneering research programs in observational cosmology." She also became the second female astronomer to be elected to the National Academy of Sciences.
and Rubin wasn't a huge fan of it either:
"If I could have my pick, I would like to learn that Newton's laws must be modified in order to correctly describe gravitational interactions at large distances. That's more appealing than a universe filled with a new kind of sub-nuclear particle."
I have high hopes for this new theory that can account for the galaxy rotation problem ( and the emDrive ): http://physicsfromtheedge.blog...
Open Source is Common Sense: http://groovix.com/
When exactly did we confirm the existence of dark matter?
Reminds me of the time Sinfeld visited the campus I was on, the entire surrounding campus was teeming with people and it packed the auditorium. Roger Penrose came the next week and it was a ghost town, barely filling a small lecture hall. Guess people have their priorities.
It's kinda sad, especially since Seinfeld is not even funny. Even in the show named after him he was the least funny character.
lucm, indeed.
There is no experimental evidence for either dark matter or dark energy.
Someday, maybe. But not today.
We can measure the rotational velocity of galaxies by noting the red/blue shift of light from the opposite arms.
We can estimate the normal matter by looking at the brightness and estimating the number of stars.
When we do that, we find that galaxies rotate much faster than even the most optimistic estimates of their normal matter. They rotate so fast that they would literally fly apart if they only had mass from visible matter.
One hypothesis is that the extra mass comes from matter that we can't see. There's so much of it needed that it can't interact with EM radiation in any way, otherwise we'd be able to see it directly.
All other hypotheses to date have been disproved in one way or another. In particular, modifications to the law of gravity cannot account for the discrepancy.
Dark matter is the most likely explanation.
There is a recently published new theory of gravity that doesn't need dark matter to explain the movement of stars. It does on the other hand need Einstein to be wrong: http://earthsky.org/space/erik... The article has a link to the actual paper.
And yet there will be fewer posts on here than on the one about the do-nothing space princess.
Carrie Fisher was an author, playwright and script and public speaker on bipolar disorder and substance abuse.
I love that cosmological stuff something fierce but none of it has an immediate impact on my daily life whereas I personally know about a dozen with bipolar & dozens more through them
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
As a rule people who see others responding to X and say, "Well what about Y?" don't give a shit about X or Y.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.