Hubble Space Telescope Detects Ring of Dark Matter 176
mknewman wrote with a link to a story on the NASA site indicating that they may have finally found dark matter using the Hubble telescope. We've discussed the stuff a few times in the last year, with the Hubble actually mapping out the dark matter in the universe in January. This, though, may be our first 'sighting' of the elusive substance. "NASA will hold a media teleconference at 1 p.m. EDT on May 15 to discuss the strongest evidence to date that dark matter exists. This evidence was found in a ghostly ring of dark matter in the cluster CL0024+17, discovered using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. The ring is the first detection of dark matter with a unique structure different from the distribution of both the galaxies and the hot gas in the cluster. The discovery will be featured in the June 20 issue of the Astrophysical Journal."
We Impress Me (Score:3, Interesting)
I mean, it seems likely that this would be the case, naturally. Nonetheless, it still strikes me.
We predict dark matter exists, then we show it exists. It seems pretty much assured that we will even find out what it is made of. This discovery further cements this feeling in my mind.
We figure there is a chemical of inheritance, we find DNA. We know there is a genome, we sequence it.
Everything seems to be a big puzzle, and we seem to be getting faster and more accurate with putting these puzzles together.
I feel fully confident in speculating, for instance, that we will solve the gene therapy issues in mere years. That we will have household humanoid robots by 2020 for under $50,000US. That we will enhance ourselves dramatically genetically and technologically by the end of the century.
Has science always been this inexorable in it's progress?
Re:We Impress Me (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, that's a ringing endorsement for a book if I've ever heard one
I feel the same about our progress being both wonderful and dangerous. I am reading Asimovs' robot novels right now, and in a forward he made a deeply profound observation. Let me google it for accuracy...
"Even as a youngster, I could not bring myself to believe that if knowledge presented danger, the solution was ignorance. To me, it always seemed that the solution had to be wisdom."
I wonder if we are becoming as good at aquiring wisdom as we are knowledge...I'm an optimist, so I think so.
But what is truly the wiser stance, optimism or pessimism?
I would say optimism, because pessimism tastes terrible - and it's unwise to eat things that taste bad
Don't get your hopes up (Score:3, Interesting)
Contrary to what the submission seems imply, the Hubble did not directly detect dark matter, and you can pretty safely bet that it won't ever.
What it did was find further evidence that dark matter exists. I don't think these media teleconferences are very rare, but they don't hold them every time somebody publishes a paper, either.
My reading of the press conference announcement is that the shape and motion of the galactic cluster in question is not possible based soley on visible mass. Furthermore, I suspect they will contend that assymmetry in their observations rules out with some degree of certainty an explanation of the observations using Modified Newtonian Dynamics (MOND), because such a finding would lead to the suspiscion that the dark matter is distributed differently from the galaxies and hot dust in the cluster (mentioned in the release). Currently MOND is the leading alternative theory to dark matter for explaining the galactic rotation curves, but it generally implies the dark matter effect should be distributed in the same fashion as normal matter.
It is the nature of the scientific method that contradicting one theory is further support for any unaffected competing theories. I think that's what is happening here. I don't think the legs are being kicked completely out from under MOND, but I'd bet it will be walking a little wobbly after this.
What is dark matter, any way? (Score:3, Interesting)
Or is my impression that dark matter is stuff we can't see wrong? Is it actually supposed to be some exotic substance (with comic-book like powers)?
I'm biased, but... (Score:3, Interesting)
Hubble is, by today's terrestrial standards, small. Its resolving power is limited, even in the relative vacuum of space, by the size of its mirror, the size, age and design of its instruments, and so on.
Yes, Hubble finds stuff. But it doesn't find disproportionately more stuff than 8-10 meter terrestrial scopes like Gemini, Subaru, or Keck.
Do the astrophysicists want it? Hell yeah - sure, big scopes on the ground can deliver results as good as Hubble's, but there aren't a lot of those to go around, and there's a limited amount of darkness, good weather, etc. So having Hubble in the mix means more research can get done, simply because there's another good tool available.
Just a thought.