Dark Matter Discovered 386
sebFlyte writes "Wired is reporting that scientists have come up to a solution as to where all the matter in the universe actually is. Experiments being done with Chandra, NASA's X-ray telescope have shown up a likely candidate for the solution of the dark matter problem. There are massive quantities of Baryons in a super-heated gas cloud several hundred million light years away."
Wrong Name (Score:4, Insightful)
WRONG TITLE, Sigh...... (Score:5, Insightful)
They HAVE NOT found dark matter, they've found the 'missing matter' as the article says. They have found a clue as to the dark matter, as a result of the discovery.
Although discovering the dark matter would be much cooler, (yeah I was excited when I read the title).
[rant] Why is it the only 3 times I've 'emailed the on duty editor' before publishing, I've been ignored and the mistakes gone through?? [/rant]
But, what I'd like to know... (Score:2, Insightful)
Is how do these extremely difficult scientific questions get answered so quickly lately.
It was just a couple days ago that slashdot reported that dark matter was being postulated as the reason for the extra mass of galaxies:
Simulating the Universe with a zBox [slashdot.org].
Now, in less than a week, we have proof for the existence of dark matter? Amazing!
How can scientists go from hypothesis to proof in such a short time? Are we really progressing by such leaps and bounds? Or, is this an example of media jumping to conclusions about initial research.
Re:Ummm (Score:4, Insightful)
If it turns out that it is normal matter after all, and we just had trouble seeing it, we have still "discovered dark matter."
Another way of putting it would be, who killed the prime minister of Georgia? If it turns out later that it was an accident from a faulty space heater, did we find out who killed him? Just becuase we were expecting a who and got a what doesn't mean the question wasn't answered.
Wait a sec, this story isn't about "dark matter" (Score:5, Insightful)
In other words, if regular stuff is about 5% of the energy density of the universe, with dark matter at about 20%, and dark energy at about 75% -- the stuff in this story comes into that 5%, ie, regular stuff and not dark matter.
Re:Baryons (Score:2, Insightful)
1) Particle physics
2) Nucleons, Hyperons, Fermions
3) The strong nuclear force
4) Fermi-Dirac Statistics
5) The Pauli Exclusion Principle
6) Hadrons, Quarks, and Pions
Re:But, what I'd like to know... (Score:3, Insightful)
At least there were... (Score:5, Insightful)
At least there were, several hundred million years ago.
This is BS - Dark Matter is Fiction (Score:2, Insightful)
As more experiments and opbservations come in, we consistently see that any additional matter we find is not nearly enough to satisfy the simulations of the Big Bang. They've been trying to find this missing matter to "save the theory" for a long time now, and this is another pebble, but they haven't found it yet. I personally am convinced that the Big Bang is a defunct theory. You don't have to be convinced yet, but I am.
If you want something to chew on, read "The Big Bang Never Happened" by Eric J. Lerner. It has details and citations aplenty.
To those of you for whom this idea is new, remember this post. In ten years when everyone "knows" that the Big Bang is a dead theory, you can say that you knew that way back in 2005.
--Sandy
Re:Ummm (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Baryons (Score:3, Insightful)
Good work but the headline is overheated (Score:5, Insightful)
The current work is an improvement over previous studies, and is good work. But the headline rather sucks. I thought we'd detected axions or something, even though I'd already read about this result.
I teach techniques to estimate cluster masses based on X-ray emission, and have used the Chandra X-ray Observatory myself. A headline about such work shouldn't trick me.
Re:Wait a sec, this story isn't about "dark matter (Score:5, Insightful)
Math is a very useful tool in astrophysics, but there's a reason that math is a separate department from any physical science.
Re:In case.... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Wait a sec, this story isn't about "dark matter (Score:1, Insightful)
And btw we don't observe the Hubble constant within our own solar system as well. There are many things that we do not and cannot observe in our backyard.
Re:Bullshit! (Score:2, Insightful)
You're obviously not a scientist then.
"Speculation" is what drives science (ie. I observe something then I speculate as to what a possible explanation could be). But it doesn't stop there. That's where experimentation comes in, to throw out my hypothesis, or not. Science is actually the whole process, not just the initial attempt at explaining an observation.
Speculation would be "Diet Coke is fattening, because most fat people drink diet coke".
This is not science. You have to PROVE your statment. And not only that, but you have to publish HOW you derived the proof, so that everyone can see it and has a chance to spot errors in your technique. AND everyone has to be able to obtain the same results as you got. Then it becomes science. That's about as far away from speculation as you can possibly get.
Now if you want to know about doppler shift and how interstellar/intergalactic distances are measured and all the "theory" and "speculation" behind it, you can pick up any physics textbook.
If you flip a light switch and the light fails to come on there are only two possibilities: There is an interruption in the circuit (ie the lightbulb burned out, most commonly) or there is no power to the circuit. There is no speculation as to the results (ie maybe I was bad and God didn't want the light to come on as punishment).