Most Detailed View of Dark Matter Mapped By Hubble 93
astroengine writes "Building on previous studies by the Hubble Space Telescope, new analysis of gravitational lensing data has revealed the most detailed map of the distribution of dark matter yet. The distribution appears as a beautiful ghost-like or ethereal haze and could have serious ramifications on our understanding as to how galaxy clusters form and evolve."
Re:physics has hit a dark brick wall (Score:4, Insightful)
Seems like we have reached the limit of our intelligence to further understand the universe.
It took us how long to get to Relativity? That was only around 100 years ago. Give us a little more time and we'll get it. This isn't a timed test (unless we destroy our planet via wars, pollution, diseases, oppression or a combination thereof).
At the risk of making scientists cringe... (Score:3, Insightful)
I consider the possibility of an incomplete model of gravity as sort of like newtonian physics. We do all sorts of local observations and the models work fine, but then under 'fantastic' scenarios beyond our ability to observe or reproduce things don't work out right, i.e. extremely fast speeds. Then Einstein provides us with relativity and it provides a factor that makes it all work and even fits cleanly into Newtonian models as a term that is immeasurably small to explain how things appear to act different without having to apply totally different rules at some arbitrary point.
Dark matter may be something real, but right now it only manifests as something to get the math to work out using our current understanding. At the huge scale or even along a dimensional relationship we can't understand, some factor emerges that knocks off our predictions but is ever present with immeasurably small impact in the 'well-understood' cases. I personally consider either case equally likely, there is either a thing (dark matter) or a mechanism out there that just exists as a big question mark until either collaborating data on where and what the dark matter is appears, or a more precise model comes out to explain the discrepencies away.
Re:Dear god! (Score:3, Insightful)
Incorrect. And frankly, you bone heads who keeps saying this are getting really annoying.
The most annoying thing is that ignorant people aren't ridiculed when making wildly incorrect statements.
Re:Dear god! (Score:3, Insightful)
oh, ffs.
i know i shouldn't feed a troll (who should be modded as such btw), but let's cut a deal:
you read up about cosmology, and i'll read the bible.
we'll compare notes.
Re:Dear god! (Score:3, Insightful)
Dark matter- God of the gaps. Can't explain something? Dark matter! That magical substance that is everywhere it wants to be, any way you need it to be!
Can't explain the missing mass of Beta decay? Introduce new particle! [fnal.gov] Can't explain how electrons are confined to the nucleus? Introduce new particle! [gsu.edu] Can't explain the inertial mass of particles? Introduce new particle! [wikipedia.org]
So yeah, introducing new particles to explain discrepancies in observations is something totally unheard of and not something a real scientist would do...