China Launches Dark Matter Space Probe (nature.com) 71
hackingbear writes: China's Dark Matter Particle Explorer Satellite Wukong, named after the fictional character Monkey King, was successfully launched at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in Gansu province on Thursday. The probe will be in service for three years to observe the direction, energy and electric charge of high-energy particles in space in search of dark matter. Two further missions will blast off next year: the world's first quantum-communications satellite and an X-ray telescope observing in a unique energy band. Together, these missions mark a new start for space science in China which previously focused on non-science missions, says Wu Ji, director-general of the National Space Science Centre (NSSC).
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
It's so funny that people really believe that foreign countries are inherently evil because they are not your own. Don't you think it's more logical that their government really is trying to do what is best for their people? Sure, there are dictatorships and there are probably alot of countries that are lead for more selfish means.
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Agreed. China didn't drop atomic bombs on Japan.
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That's more ignorance than evilness. We'd be dropping those things all over the place if they acted like really big conventional weapons (which is what they were wanting at the time.)
The effects of radiation and fallout weren't really known back when the bombs were dropped (well I'm sure there was some scientists ranting about it but we all know how selective the government's hearing is when it comes to scientists telling them they're being stupid -- climate change anyone?)
And its those effects, not the ki
Re: taking China's word for it (Score:1)
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> We all know China can't be trusted...
Except for those 90% of consumer products lying everywhere in your house.
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
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It makes up 95% of the universe actually
Keep losing it (Score:1)
Re:Keep losing it (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re: taking China's word for it (Score:1)
Your whole premise is wrong because there are methods of detecting photons that do not involve large jumps in energies, with multiple continuum methods working from the microwave region on to high energy gammas. And if you're the same guy who has been for years posting quantum is wrong because of a severe lack of understanding the variety processes photons are involved in, you should have learned about this by now as it has been pointed out by replies many times by multiple people.
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Re: taking China's word for it (Score:2)
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Chinese or aliens, my first thought was Cartman had better clinch-up his sphincter or his dark matter's gonna get probed...
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How did they find enough dark matter to build a space probe? I thought that stuff was hard to find. :)
There's lots of dark matter, 85% of the universe according to the article, and it is hard to find, which is why we have to send a probe to space to look for it. In this case, they will really be collecting data on high energy cosmic rays. Some theories about dark matter suspect that in can interact with itself or with regular matter and produce cosmic rays. The chance if it doing so is very small, but there is so much of it, it hopefully happens in detectable amounts. So, what they are probably doing is col
Re: And they use the metric system (Score:1)
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So does NASA... Goes to show how horrible imperial is
Hmmm ... interesting: NASA criticised for sticking to imperial units [newscientist.com]
“The Shuttle and US segments of the ISS were built using the English system of measurements,” says NASA spokesman Grey Hautaluoma. “And much of the Ares launch vehicle and Kennedy Space Center ground systems are legacy hardware built in the English system, too.”
US law
NASA recently calculated that converting the relevant drawings, software and documentation to the “International System” of units (SI) would cost a total of $370 million – almost half the cost of a 2009 shuttle launch, which costs a total of $759 million. “We found the cost of converting to SI would exceed what we can afford,” says Hautaluoma.
“Given these budget constraints and the need for consistent units throughout the Constellation Program lifecycle to minimise risks, and to contribute to mission success, we’re revising the previous management directive to a primarily English-units-based program,” he says.
Question: What is this? [gizmodo.com]
A) Assembly line for Imperial starfighters built using metric? Or ....
B) Assembly line for metric busting SR-71 built using imperial?
Answer: It's a trick question, there are no Imperial starfighters. The answer is B: an assembly line for SR-71s built using imperial.
Something to ponder on my 5km walk.
Re: And they use the metric system (Score:1)
Re: And they use the metric system (Score:2)
China already has.
Where Will They Be Looking (Score:2)
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For the next few years the Chinese will be probing around Uranus looking for dark matter?
And all they'll find is klingons :-)
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For the next few years the Chinese will be probing around Uranus looking for dark matter?
And all they'll find is klingons :-)
Eeeeww... [urbandictionary.com]
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A small clarification: Superman is fictional, Monkey King is mythological, which is the same thing, but with the benefits of tradition and hindsight.
Dark matter may lie just past the moon (Score:3)
Re: random ass hypothesis about dark matter (Score:1)
Born from an egg on a mountain top (Score:2)
The funkiest monkey that ever popped.
Clever monkey name (Score:1)
China is the future of the human race... (Score:1)
...in space. The US has tucked up their balls and walked away from the field.
here's a question (Score:2)
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I have a question. You know how the voyager space probes made it as far as they did and the tiny, tiny, mega super tiny force in one direction that was unknown was determined to be the equal and opposite reaction from infrared photons leaving one side of the craft? NASA noticed something that tiny and verified it with calculations. If dark matter existed, wouldn't that have had a similar pull on one of the probes? It traveled through the entire solar system and saw absolutely no gravitational interference at all from unknown mass. I'd consider that a pretty effective probe that's accidentally looking for dark matter.
It's a good questions. I would bet, especially with the that latest theories that passage of the sun and planets through the dark matter cloud would cause some high density filaments to form, like wake from the passing boat. Somebody could get the voyager data, look for deviations in expected movement, figure out the suspected location of filaments at the time, do the gravitational equations for the filaments, and see if the math fits the data. Problem one is that is all on current understanding which no do
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That puts limits on the amount of dark matter that can be in something of a clump near Voyager's trajectory, but observing spacecraft movement is a very, very inexact way to measure gravity. Moreover, dark matter doesn't interact with itself like normal matter does, so it doesn't clump on this scale. If dark matter were evenly distributed, it would not have a significant effect on spacecraft movement. It's also very sparse, so the total amount in the Solar system may be well below what we could detect g
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The EM force is also significantly stronger than gravity -- the effect of those few infrared photons is probably millions of times more powerful than any gravitation you'd feel from dark matter (or real matter, for that matter.. Remember there's still dust and other shit here and there in space that will all be exerting gravitational pull but its so small that its undetectable.)
EM is something like of 10^36 times more powerful than gravity http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/forces/couple.html [gsu.edu] (I'm
Gotta wonder ... (Score:1)
If they think that finding and understanding dark matter is what China hopes will make them a military power greater than the US
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I don't know why they would. China might still be semi-communist and definitely has a bad track record for human rights, but for all of that they're still a billion people with a billion sets of hopes and ambitions. There are lots of scientists in China that do their work because they believe it will help humanity, just as there is plenty of them elsewhere with that belief.
Similarly there will be people in government who are looking further to the future than the next war and will be willing to back fundi
Are they using gold? (Score:2)
I'm not a physicist and really know nothing about the subject, but it would be interesting to know if the Chinese are attempting to detect dark matter using the aforementioned substances.
Article here [wired.com].