Student Finds Universe's Missing Mass 210
Posted
by
Roblimo
from the she's-a-star-who-looks-at-stars dept.
from the she's-a-star-who-looks-at-stars dept.
An anonymous reader writes "A 22-year-old Australian university student has solved a problem which has puzzled astrophysicists for decades, discovering part of the so-called 'missing mass' of the universe during her summer break."
Somewhere in the back of the student fridge... (Score:3, Funny)
...mouldy bit it'll probably still be tasty if you scrape it off a bit.
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Different perspective needed. (Score:2)
Re:Different perspective needed. (Score:4, Funny)
Of course it was. She's Australian!
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Of course it was. She's Australian!
I wonder what would have happened if she was Chinese!
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Well, it would be very strange indeed if she "was" Chinese, and now isn't; but it can be interesting to think about if she "were" Chinese. /iamagrammarwhoresorry
They found something else, too... (Score:5, Funny)
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Samantha Carter (SG-1) is wayyyy hotter than Jodie Foster.
Re:They found something else, too... (Score:5, Funny)
This is why we can't have nice things.
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Cute, but not the hottest...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amy_Mainzer [wikipedia.org]
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Go into astrophysics for the babes: (Score:2)
There were several very cute female astrophysics grad students at UNM when I went there in 1993. Likely even more of them now.
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2 seconds on google images: http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/technology/sci-tech/amelias-summer-job-finding-part-of-the-universe-20110526-1f6h5.html [brisbanetimes.com.au]
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Is that supposed to be a female goatse? I'm a little bit tempted to look on purpose...buuut I better not...
Noteworthiness (Score:2)
Any astrophysicists (or at least postgrads) here to say how important or true this achievement really is?
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The server is located amongst the universe's missing mass, so it may take some time.
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Re:Noteworthiness (Score:5, Informative)
Any astrophysicists (or at least postgrads) here to say how important or true this achievement really is?
The article (got to it prior Newton's First Law of ./ effect) actually did quite a good job of addressing exactly that.
Takeaways were:
-Missing mass (not dark matter, but matter which was seen to exist during creation of universe but is now someplace different) turns out to have migrated to filaments that span across the universe.
-Claimed that astrophysicists have long postulated (~2 decades) that the mass had moved there, but that the imaging capabilities weren't able to resolve it.
-Then in a fit of bipolar impetus, also went on to say how exciting a discovery this was for the community.
-Finally acknowledged that most likely nothing useful (to mankind) will come of this discovery.
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-Missing mass (not dark matter, but matter which was seen to exist during creation of universe but is now someplace different) turns out to have migrated to filaments that span across the universe.
Sounds like physical philotic rays to me. Is that you, Jane?
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Finally acknowledged that most likely nothing useful (to mankind) will come of this discovery.
Wait... does that qualifier mean that it might be useful to our alien overlords or something?
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-Finally acknowledged that most likely nothing useful (to mankind) will come of this discovery.
Well... if it fulfills some predictions then it possibly validates some theories. If nothing else, maybe the scientists who were collectively looking for this missing mass can now go on to something useful :)
Re:Noteworthiness (Score:5, Informative)
Any astrophysicists (or at least postgrads) here to say how important or true this achievement really is?
It's fairly significant. They have confirmed that some fraction of the missing baryonic matter (the ordinary stuff we are made of, like Galactic Dark Matter, not the exotic new-particle stuff) is in the filaments that exist on very large scales in the universe. If they had failed to find it the result would have been more interesting, but even so they've done a good bit of science by testing the idea that the missing baryonic matter is in these filaments by actually going and looking for it rather than taking it on faith that it must be there.
We know there is missing baryonic matter because we know what the baryonic density in the universe is from the primordial helium/hydrogen ratio. Free neutrons only live about fifteen minutes, so as the Big Bang cooled and neutrons and protons condensed out of the primordial quark-gluon plasma there was a relatively short interval in which helium could form. We know the size of the universe at that time from the temperature, and we know the density because the denser it was the more neutrons would have been captured onto protons to form heavier isotopes, so by figuring out the primordial density of deuterium, helium and lithium we can put pretty strong constraints on the total baryonic mass of the universe.
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I find it unnerving that people/scientists claim to know things when they only think they know them
I find it amusing that on the one hand you claim not to to know anything about physics (and clearly you don't, nor science in general) and then try to bolster your skeptical position based on claims that come directly from modern physics.
Skepticism is not a self-consistent position: to motivate it skeptics have to claim that they know things, and that their knowledge of those things (from sensory illusions to radical meaning variance to the simple complexity of the universe) justifies their skepticism.
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I find it amusing that on the one hand you claim not to to know anything about physics (and clearly you don't, nor science in general) and then try to bolster your skeptical position based on claims that come directly from modern physics.
A) I said I claimed not have read/understood any of the physics that was used to make your claims - not that I haven't read or grasped any physics. ..." - not - "It is a fact that ...." - a distinction that is what my whole post was about. Stating things in certain terms when they are only known in uncertain terms - the best evidence we have, the best theory we have - are not definitively true and it bothers
B) The modern-physics I did reference, I used uncertain terms when referencing it - "It appears that
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I just wish some astrophysicists (or the people who quote/repeat them, not sure who's at fault) would bring humility to their ideas and realize that even after a life-time of thinking and studying they are still no different than an 18 year old just getting out of high school that doesn't know shit about shit.
I think it's more likely you don't know shit about shit. Yes, the word "know" is used loosely, but in general means "all the experimental evidence obtained so far points to this being true within some specified reasonable error margins". Whereas you don't appear even have a basic understanding of the theory being applied (by your own admission) or the experimental evidence available, and yet you feel qualified to comment on whether people "know" things or not.
And you know the temperature of the Universe at the moment of the big bang, how? You're not extrapolating anything or making assumptions about the nature of things before the things ever existed and that similar rules apply? I think you are. I think you'd be arrogant to assume you know anything about the nature of things when the Universe as we know it didn't yet exist.
I think you're being arrogant to presume you hav
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A minute is 60 seconds where a second is defined as the duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium-133 atom. Which is the same throughout the entire the universe and to the best of our knowledge the same for all time.
I love quotes like these, as they prove the religious nature of modern science. Hidden for the most part, but still dependent upon "faith". A belief in things unseen.
You don't know that the period of the transition is the same throughout the entire universe, or the same for all time. You assume it because you don't have any reason to think it will be different. That's still an assumption.
Of course, you could be saying that the number 9+ billion is the same throughout the universe and not that the actual
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and yet you feel qualified to comment on whether people "know" things or not.
Yes, I do. If it is called a theory, then no one knows it is true, they may think it is true, they may believe it is true - but they do not know it to be true. My entire post was about how people sound and choose their words to make their statements appear more authoritative than they really are. I'm am not saying the parent's claims are wrong or are incorrect - I was only pointing out that they are not absolutely 100% correct which is how he chose to state it. I am aware of what scientists mean when they s
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The SI units have been defined in non-Earth centric ways for many many years now. A minute is 60 seconds where a second is defined as the duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium-133 atom. Which is the same throughout the entire the universe and to the best of our knowledge the same for all time.
This measurement suffers from the same problem. Define a second at a point in time when a caesium-133 atom had never existed. We base our units of time on things that exist today and still don't even really have a solid grasp of what we are even measuring. At least, I have never heard of anyone claim to have a complete understanding of time, what it is, whether it exists naturally or is purely a construct of (human) consciousness and exactly how we all travel through it. Personall
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One more point, I left out.
The SI units have been defined in non-Earth centric ways for many many years now. A minute is 60 seconds where a second is defined as the duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium-133 atom. Which is the same throughout the entire the universe and to the best of our knowledge the same for all time.
This measurement suffers from the same problem. Define a second at a point in time when a caesium-133 atom had never existed. We base our units of time on things that exist today and still don't even really have a solid grasp of what we are even measuring. At least, I have never heard of anyone claim to have a complete understanding of time, what it is, whether it exists naturally or is purely a construct of (human) consciousness and exactly how we all travel through it. .
I don't know about complete, but Stephen Hawkings "A Brief History of Time" (and the real physics textbooks underlying the popularisation) show a pretty good degree of understanding.
As for measuring time. We rely on our (extensive) observation that lots of other processes in the universe correlate very well with the oscillation of the radiation ...caesium-133 atom. So if the half life of a neutron is roughly 9 trillion cycles of that radiation one day, it seems to be the same the next day and in the next la
problems (Score:2)
Only from the frame of a outside observer. And if the universe is in an stage where it is expanding at 50% of the speed of light, how are you going to observe from an outside frame of reference? Also, 'standing still' is kind of tricky. Standing still compared to what? The expanding universe?
Which is to say, if we could se
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15 minutes at the speed of light is different than 15 minutes standing still.
If you had bothered to learn any relativity theory (over a century old, not exactly hot off the presses), you would be less completely confused. Sorry, you have to pay to play. As Euclid remarked, there is no "royal road to geometry", you actually have to learn some math and physical theories or your opinions really don't matter (in fact they are not even wrong). On the other hand none of the relevant knowledge is inaccessible (un
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There is no meaningful difference. If you want to be pedantic about it, anyone who knows something only thinks they know that something.
Because complete and total certainty isn't possible, saying 'I know something' is just convenient shorthand for 'I think I know something'.
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To myself, "know" implies certainty
The only kind of people who equate knowledge with certainty are extreme rationalists and the uneducated (or unreflective) people who have never thought about how they use the word.
In my view as an empiricist, knowledge is possible without certainty, and indeed the vast majority of things we know are not certain. I know where I parked my car, and would go so far as to say I know where my car is right now. I know my name. I know what colour of socks I'm wearing. I know THAT I'm wearing socks. All of thes
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Well said!
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"We know that the center of the earth is hot."
Huh? We've never drilled deeper than a scratch; anything we "know" about the center of the earth is certainly something we deduce/extrapolate/theorize based on our model. Even without slipping into pure solipsism, surely what we "know" about the center of the earth is based on entirely the same sort of deduction you seem to reject for the Big Bang.
Dead server is dead! (Score:2)
Way to go Slashdot!
Another source for the story (Score:5, Informative)
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you wouldn't believe it reading the drivel that the popular press have been writing about it. you'd have thought the words "electron density" would have given it away that we're not talking dark matter here, but no. STUDENT FINDS MISSING MATTER scream the headlines. "ok, fair enough," you think. then the article is filled with things about dark matter. pah.
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Also of note (for those who didn't notice): the news paper is from the city Victoria, in British Columbia (Canada) NOT the state in Australia.
Just Google (Score:3)
One could just google for copies of the story. I found tons, e.g.here [universetoday.com] or a summary here [rationalskepticism.org].
Basically, he located the mystery material within vast structures called "filaments of galaxies".
Now why /. can auto-parse some URLs and not others is anyone's guess.
She. Not a "he". (Score:4, Interesting)
Amelia Fraser-McKelvie [brisbanetimes.com.au]
You might have found me (Score:3, Funny)
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In space, no one can hear a Greased Up Deaf Guy [cheezburger.com] scream.
Ok, interestingish (Score:5, Informative)
A student has found that if you observe in the x-ray range you discover ordinary matter between the galaxies that was clearly evident in the early universe and isn't visible in other parts of the spectrum.
I'm not sure that it's altogether news that different frequencies let you see different things - to me, by far the biggest news is that despite having x-ray telescopes for a very long time and computers quite capable of crunching that data to detect potentially interesting observations, the astronomers have been opting for cheap student labor instead.
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Re:Ok, interestingish (Score:5, Informative)
Here's the paper: An estimate of the electron density in filaments of galaxies at z~0.1 [arxiv.org].
The student got listed as first author, which is cool for her. The paper itself is a follow-up to Pimbblet's (the actual prof with the actual grant) 2004 study of filaments. The major finding seems to be that the press is gullible enough to print anything if you say an undergrad did the work. In this case, the press manages to avoid looking like total idiots, since the study is pretty cool and interesting. Nonetheless, the hype is vastly out of proportion to the significance.
But they got her last name wrong (Score:2)
Couldn't spell to Pond ;-)
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Fine, I acknowledged I could be wrong, no need for the biting.
Order of importance (Score:3, Informative)
It's not that you're wrong, you're just using different metrics. In physics (and astronomy, I think), the authors are usually listed in decreasing order of work done, starting with the person who did the most. The people at the end of the list have done so little work, why are they even on the paper? Because, as you say, they are listed in increasing order of importance (read: amount of grant money received). If you have enough people, sometimes they just throw them all into alphabetical order and pretend t
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Sure it was paid for, but which costs more? A 1024-node supercomputer or an intern?
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Well, no. I don't agree. An archaeologist in the field can't be replaced by a computer down the hallway. It is quite impossible for a computer to tell you what you will find if you dig 7 feet at position X. On the other hand, a computer and a human eye can equally spot abnormalities in an x-ray image of intergalactic space. (Computers cannot be better, as to prevent false positives and false negatives, the algorithm must be calibrated by eye and the positives then validated by eye. What they CAN do better i
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It is quite impossible for a computer to tell you what you will find if you dig 7 feet at position X. On the other hand, a computer and a human eye can equally spot abnormalities in an x-ray image of intergalactic space.
That's the dumbest thing I've read in the past week on /. The only difference between your two scenarios is that you don't know of a sensor that can image what is 7 feet under at position X. Obviously you haven't seen Jurassic Park =p.
Missing mass but not "dark matter" (Score:4, Informative)
Horrible article/summary (Score:5, Informative)
http://arxiv.org/abs/1104.0711 [arxiv.org]
The abstract does not make any grandiose claims of finding the missing mass of the universe but instead states how the article presents properties of mass in filaments.
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must be the heat (Score:4, Funny)
i read
"Student Finds Miss Universe's Mass"
Black Hole Research (Score:2)
So that explains why I can never retrieve the information that gets entered into my phone!
I thought it was at fast food restaurants (Score:2)
Have you seen the excess of mass at McDonalds? And don't get me started on "Kentucky Fried Chicken!"
Damn I knew I forgot something... (Score:2)
Don't Worry (Score:2, Funny)
If the missing mass of the universe is identified it will only take a few minutes for Microsoft to try to patent it.
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You misspelled "Disney".
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The Universe's Little Black Dress (Score:2)
She discovered it upon reflecting that women lie about their weight. The missing mass is discovered by asking the husband when he is too drunk to know better than to be honest.
Yes, universe, that dress DOES make you look fat.
That's nothing (Score:2)
If she can find my missing ballpoint pens - that would be something!
Hey, has anyone seen the... (Score:2)
...oh, there it is.
Re:age (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps more surprising is the prof's willingness to share credit for the discovery with his student.
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Or the standards of beauty include knowledge that the person in question is intelligent
That's a crock of shit.
What a female's intelligence does is make you (the guy) want to be with her longer than the time it takes to go a few rolls in the hay.
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Aw come on she doesn't look bad.
At least average looks + well above-average smarts * geek perception + geek desperation = smokin' hot!
Re:age (Score:5, Insightful)
Why is it that the younger the person who does something, the more special people think it is? I call it the "America's Got Talent" effect.
At least in science it seems the body of human knowledge continues to expand. Like many of the math theorems that requires years of field theory and calculus to even understand WTF the theorem is about. Try for example reading the proof of Fermat's last theorem without developing a brain aneurysm. It's like they talk Greek and Latin and ancient Hebrew and something you could swear is alien.
That young people still discover things is proof there's still low hanging fruit or that exceptional talent matters more than a PhD and 20 years of working with the subject matter. Of course there's many cookie cutter professors too but usually there are some that are exceptional talents and PhDs and have worked on it 20 years who has picked clean any reasonably accessible discovery.
Same with for example physics, unless you're at the Tevatron or CERN it's unlikely you'll find any new elementary particles, add any new entries to the periodic table, build carbon nanotubes, high-temperature superconductors or anything else that will make a huge impact, compared to the relatively simple lab equipment 100 years ago. That's why the young ones are news, because they're the exceptions.
Re:age (Score:5, Insightful)
What I think it means is that when you've been working on something so long you tend to lose focus on something obvious. It takes a fresh pair of eyes without a vested interest to make the connection.
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Maybe because it's a genuine rarity. Older, more knowledge professionals make more scientific progress than young people. When young people, who are otherwise assumed to be worthless or even detrimental to society do something to progress academia or society, it's a notable event.
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Is it? Einstein, Hawking, Nietzsche all did their greatest work before they got older. The man who invented the technology for the original mammogram was 27. It was my understanding that if you didn't do anything great by the time you turn 30, you're unlikely to achieve anything of note after that. Particularly in theoretical and academic realms.
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The power of ignorance. Seriously. At least in part.
Young people are usually less likely to rely in the previous generation dogmas, so they test everything. By pure statistics, some of them are intelligent enough and point at a direction right enough to find a new answer that would have been passed over by older scientifics. Also, they may be more blunt because they don't have a status to defend (non-euclidean geometry was several times discovered but people found it too 'weird' and chose not to publicite i
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And yes, physicists are well-known for their extravagant, research grant-fueled
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What I call dogma is dogma. It exists, even in science (or better, amongst scientifics). Just a few examples:
Lord Kelvin rejected the idea of radioactivity.
Darwinism was opposed not only by creationists, but also by evolutionists that felt that evolution had to have more sense than just a wild trial and error (v.g. lamarckists).
"A few atoms will never be able to light a match"
Quantum physics were opposed by scientifics who wanted a more "deterministic" model.
Relativity
Of course, I am not saying that just no
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And there you have your outliers that got famous because they did amazing work while young... now name all the people who did great things after the age of 30.
Ya, you'll see that the "after-30" crowd blows away the "young" crowd. Young people doing great things surprises people because it's not expected of them.
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Most guys want to look at the OUTSIDE of them. He wanted to look at the INSIDE of them. That's worth something, isn't it?
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I'd say that's worth at least a few sessions with a psychiatrist.
she didn't find anything (Score:5, Informative)
"Ms Fraser-McKelvie said the ‘Eureka moment’ came when Dr Lazendic-Galloway closely examined the data they had collected. “Using her expert knowledge in the X-ray astronomy field, Jasmina (Dr Lazendic-Galloway) re-analyzed our results to find that we had in fact detected the filaments in the results, where previously we believed we had not.”"
So the student found nothing, it wasn't until an expert looked at it and actually found the mass.
So I guess it depends on your perspective as to if the student found it or not. If you're throwing out a bunch of "junk" and an expert goes through it and discovers a priceless artifact does that mean you discovered it or did the expert?
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no, there are no other source. Also, there is no way to search for them~
Sheesh.
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CoralCache [nyud.net] has a mirror of the original. If you're one of the people who regularly Rs TFA and runs Firefox with Greasemonkey I recommend downloading a script that automatically rewrites /. links to use CC.
Re:Kinda OT - black holes (Score:5, Funny)
The closing line about justifying funding for pure physics research 'Do you use a mobile phone? Some of that technology came about by black hole research'."
To what bit of mobile phone technology is he referring?
AT&T's network.
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Re:Next up... (Score:5, Funny)
Well, the missing mass was being held by the Space Pope...
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I would blame a lot of the slashdotters for wanting to see if tfa had a picture of the oz math 22 year old genius. Facebook says shes alright ;)
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This is slashdot, no one reads TFA :)... we just make up opinions using car analogies (it's like if the student realized by accident where some of the missing mass of the universe was by opening the trunk of the car).
bonus points if you can use fancy mathematical equations and complicated terms to explain every day things :)
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no. this is not about dark matter. this is about "missing" normal matter.
Re:Late to University, then? (Score:4, Interesting)
Wow a young woman seems to figure out one of the greatest mysteries of our era, you make a snarky comment implying that she's fat. That must be why there are so few 'geek' women, as the boys apparently go strait for the gut when a lady seems smarter than they. Sadly there doesn't seem to be much discussion about this that isn't sophomoric banter.
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The guy who followed the instructions to lay the bricks didn't design the cathedral.
Nor did Fraser-Mckenzie "discover" the missing mass.
But for some reason this undergrad has got most of the popular credit when the usual process is to give the underlings who did some grunt work no credit at all.
Why is that?
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Why perhaps because she is humble and hard working?
She says the ‘Eureka’ moment came after Dr Lazendic-Galloway examined the data collected. “Using her expert knowledge in the X-ray astronomy field, Jasmina reanalysed our results to find that we had in fact detected the filaments in our data, where previously we believed we had not.” Ms Fraser-McKelvie said in the press release.
This breakthrough discovery in determining the amount of mass contained in the filaments, as scientists have been making deductions based on numerical models until now.
Although she is still a year away from undertaking Honours, Ms Fraser-McKelvie’s work has been published in the prestigious scientific journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, a terrific achievement for an undergraduate. “Being a published author is very exciting for me, and something I could never have achieved without the help of both Kevin and Jasmina.” she said.
“Their passion and commitment for this project ensured the great result and I am very thankful to them for all the help they have given me and time they have invested.”
From the original [scienceill...ted.com.au] article as posted on Science Illustrated's website.
Emphasis is mine but the quotes clearly point out her level of gratitude and humbleness or would you like to attach some other meaning to it?
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That must be why there are so few 'geek' women, as the boys apparently go strait for the gut when a lady seems smarter than they. Sadly there doesn't seem to be much discussion about this that isn't sophomoric banter.
Guys insult guys on a regular and persistent basis, but they don't break down, cut their hair and transfer to Womyn's Studies. (Or whatever young women do who can't hack male-dominated domains.)