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galaxy crash proves dark matter existence?
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| pkcRAISTLIN |
| quote: |
A HUGE collision between two clusters of galaxies has provided the first direct evidence of the existence of the universe's mysterious dark matter, US researchers say.
"This is the most energetic cosmic event, besides the Big Bang, which we know about," said Maxim Markevitch of the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
The impact forced apart dark and normal matter, offering the strongest evidence yet that most of the matter in the universe is dark, researchers said.
"We've come closer than ever to seeing this invisible matter," University of Arizona researcher Doug Clowe, a leader of the study, said in a statement.
"This provides the first direct proof that dark matter must exist and must make up the majority of the matter in the universe," Mr Clowe said.
Scientists realised decades ago that galaxies rotated much faster than their mass should allow, giving rise to the idea that invisible dark matter keeps them from flying apart.
The new evidence of dark matter's existence was discovered with NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, the Hubble Space Telescope, the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope and the Magellan optical telescopes, researchers said. |
link
um, nothing to add from me. i just think theoretical physics is real sexy ;) |
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| Moongoose |
| quote: | Originally posted by pkcRAISTLIN
i just think theoretical physics is real sexy ;) |
+1
I just wish that my interest into theoretical physics would have started earlier, if it had i would have entered a different program in my uni. Damn you programming and electronics why has though captured my interest in such and early age.
Anyway 2 clusters of galaxies colliding the forces at work there unimaginable. Just think of those billions of suns and whoknowshowmany planets comming together. Creepy yet somehow not. |
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| Temperate |
| steven hawking has just popped a woody. |
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| Renegade |
| quote: | Originally posted by Shakka
pics or stfu. |
| quote: | 
This composite image shows the galaxy cluster 1E 0657-56, also known as the "bullet cluster." This cluster was formed after the collision of two large clusters of galaxies, the most energetic event known in the universe since the Big Bang.
Hot gas detected by Chandra in X-rays is seen as two pink clumps in the image and contains most of the "normal," or baryonic, matter in the two clusters. The bullet-shaped clump on the right is the hot gas from one cluster, which passed through the hot gas from the other larger cluster during the collision. An optical image from Magellan and the Hubble Space Telescope shows the galaxies in orange and white. The blue areas in this image show where astronomers find most of the mass in the clusters. The concentration of mass is determined using the effect of so-called gravitational lensing, where light from the distant objects is distorted by intervening matter. Most of the matter in the clusters (blue) is clearly separate from the normal matter (pink), giving direct evidence that nearly all of the matter in the clusters is dark. |
EDIT:
Some animations and more info here:
http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2006/1e0657/ |
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| eROs.au |
| dark matter is invisible? I thought it was basically the same as regular matter, just behaving inversely at the atomic level. |
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| Shakka |
Sweeet. You da man. |
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| Shakka |
My head just exploded. I read the article and came to the following conclusion: When galaxies collide, it is nothing like when two cars collide. When galaxies collide, it is a collision of their energy fields. I say it's just a struggle between gravitational and magnetic forces. Some of galaxy A gets overtaken by parts of galaxy B and visa versa, and when they finish penetrating through eachother, they take a piece of each with them. I'm reminded of an old Paul Young song all of the sudden. But whatever, why can't they just say something like, "we got this cool picture from space. It looks like some crazy interglacitc orgy going on a few billion light years away."
| quote: | Originally posted by eROs.au
dark matter is invisible? I thought it was basically the same as regular matter, just behaving inversely at the atomic level. |
So you can actually see dark matter? Christ, I still don't understand the concept of Imaginary Numbers in mathematics. Yeah yeah yeah...the square root of -1. I'm a more visual person. |
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| Renegade |
| quote: | Originally posted by eROs.au
dark matter is invisible? I thought it was basically the same as regular matter, just behaving inversely at the atomic level. |
I think you're thinking of anti-matter, which is basically annihilated as soon as it comes into existence. As for dark matter, no-one can really say for sure what it's composed of just yet - or even if it's really "matter" as we know it at all - just that it can't be seen and that it has a gravitational influence. From wikipedia:
| quote: | | At present, the most common view is that dark matter is primarily non-baryonic, made of one or more elementary particles other than the usual electrons, protons, neutrons, and known neutrinos. The most commonly proposed particles are axions, sterile neutrinos, and WIMPs (Weakly Interacting Massive Particles, including neutralinos). None of these are part of the standard model of particle physics, but they can arise in extensions to the standard model. Many supersymmetric models naturally give rise to stable WIMPs in the form of neutralinos. Heavy, sterile neutrinos exist in extensions to the standard model that explain the small neutrino mass through the seesaw mechanism. |
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_matter
There, doesn't that make much more sense now? :p
| quote: | Originally posted by Shakka
My head just exploded. I read the article and came to the following conclusion: When galaxies collide, it is nothing like when two cars collide. When galaxies collide, it is a collision of their energy fields. I say it's just a struggle between gravitational and magnetic forces. Some of galaxy A gets overtaken by parts of galaxy B and visa versa, and when they finish penetrating through eachother, they take a piece of each with them. I'm reminded of an old Paul Young song all of the sudden. But whatever, why can't they just say something like, "we got this cool picture from space. It looks like some crazy interglacitc orgy going on a few billion light years away." |
There is so much empty space in galaxies between stars that the chances of matter (i.e. stars) colliding in them - as I understand it anyway - is incredibly slim. So yeah, it's mainly just gravity and energy at play when it happens, but it still looks pretty cool:
Oh, and keep in mind that we're not just talking about a couple of galaxies colliding in this case: we're talking two huge superclusters of galaxies, comprised of hundreds of gravitationally bound individual galxies, colliding into each other in one big universal accident on a scale you can't even begin to comprehend. It takes the term "cluster" to a whole new level, huh? :clown: |
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| Shakka |
| quote: | Originally posted by Renegade
Oh, and keep in mind that we're not just talking about a couple of galaxies colliding in this case: we're talking two huge superclusters of galaxies, comprised of hundreds of gravitationally bound individual galxies, colliding into each other in one big universal accident on a scale you can't even begin to comprehend. It takes the term "cluster" to a whole new level, huh? :clown: |
Seriously--a collision that takes place over the course millenia (in local galaxy-cluster relative time that is!).
And in case anyone was wondering what the hell baryonic matter is:
Wiki
| quote: | Baryonic matter is matter composed mostly of baryons (by mass), which includes atoms of any sort (and thus includes nearly all matter that we may encounter or experience in everyday life, including our bodies). Non-baryonic matter is the fundamental antithesis of such matter, being any sort of matter that is not primarily composed of baryons. This might include such ordinary matter as neutrinos, photons or free electrons; however, it may also include exotic species of non-baryonic dark matter, such as supersymmetric particles, axions or black holes. The distinction between baryonic and non-baryonic matter is important in cosmology, because Big Bang nucleosynthesis models set tight constraints on the amount of baryonic matter present in the early universe.
The very existence of baryons is also a significant problem in cosmology, since we have assumed that the Big Bang produced a state with equal amounts of baryons and anti-baryons. The process by which baryons come to outnumber their antiparticles is called baryogenesis (in contrast to a process by which leptons account for the predominance of matter over antimatter, leptogenesis). |
Smoke that!
p.s. Renegate--what's your background? You seem to know a lot about this stuff. |
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| metalgearsolid |
| Hey don't worry give about a billion years from now when the Anromeda galaxy and the milky way galaxy collide we will be experiancing something similar. |
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| Shakka |
Here's a fun little mind trip. Seems appropriate enough for this thread.
Video - What We Still Don't Know About the Cosmos
They cut the line between science and faith razor thin in that video. It's interesting to hear the opinions of theoretical physicists---though that video could be complete bull for all I know.
Oh--
And there is a part 1 , but I don't think part 3 is up yet. |
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