NASA Finds Direct Proof of Dark Matter

NASA News ^ | 21 Aug 2006 | Erica Hupp

[phoenix0468]

Now I know where all those dropped packets went!! Who do I sue!!

[true_blue_texican]

The expansion of the universe is a large-scale effect;The expansion of the universe is a large-scale effect;

More epicycles!

[longshadow]

If our galaxy -- a rather congenial place so far -- were to encounter something like that ... I donno.

AFAIK, it would be the same as our galaxy encountering a galaxy of visible matter of equal mass: they would pass through each other with virtually no star/star collisions (galaxies are mostly empty space). OTOH, there would be profound gravitational interactions -- many stars, clusters, etc. would be ripped out of their usual orbits and get flung all over the place. Lots of disruption possible from gravitational interactions.

Could be perilous for some planets, while others may go unscathed.

[MainFrame65]

No, they mean DARK matter. You posted a picture of DORK matter!

[Swordmaker]

The hot gas in each cluster was slowed by a drag force, similar to air resistance, during the collision. In contrast, the dark matter was not slowed by the impact because it does not interact directly with itself or the gas except through gravity. Therefore, during the collision the dark matter clumps from the two clusters moved ahead of the hot gas, producing the separation of the dark and normal matter seen in the image. If hot gas was the most massive component in the clusters, as proposed by alternative theories of gravity, such an effect would not be seen. Instead, this result shows that dark matter is required.

So, let's see... hot gasses somehow are affected by a "drag force"... in a vacuum that is almost indistinguishable from the rest of interstellar space, say 1 atom per stere(1 cubic meter) to be really generous, but the much more plentiful and gravitationally active "dark matter" does not even collide with other dark matter????

So what is this "Drag force?" Magic? How can the dark matter pass through the area where the "luminous" matter is interacting strongly... without interacting? Magic again?

Keep in mind also that interstellar space is almost as sparsely occupied by stars... with fewer than 1 star per (10 LY)³ {That's a volume of space equal to a cube comprised of 1000 cubes 1 light year on a side!)... and that galaxies in this cluster are even more sparsley distributed... say 1 per 1,000,000 light year cube. So what are the chances that any one atom, any one star, or even any one galaxy would collide with any other like component of these two clusters? Think of two shotguns, A and B, firing at each other from opposite sides... and the pattern of shot intersects at 30 yards... what are the chances that any one of the pellets from A striking B?

Have these guys stopped to think that the "hot gasses" are actually plasmas? That these "hot gasses" are hot because they carry a charge??? Charged gasses (Plasmas) in the laboratory do not act like uncharged gasses... How about that currents flow through every plasma we create here on earth... easily... current flow creates magnetism, electro-magnetism. Remember basic physics... like charges repel, opposites attract? That will change what apparent affects gravity may have. Electro-magnetism's force is 39 orders of magnitude greater than the force of gravity.

What if what the astronomers are seeing is not a luminous matter/dark matter event but only a luminous matter event as two galaxies clusters with different charges interact? Note that if you look carefully in the space between the two magenta areas that filaments span between them... over thousands of light years... filaments similar to those that are seen in almost any plasma demonstration in the laboratory.

[REDWOOD99]

All I know is that there is a bin for the dark matter, one for the gray matter and one for the white matter. If I mix 'em up, she won't do the laundry 'til I fix it.

[Empireoftheatom48]

Watch out for the "Crazy Eddie Probe".....

[SunkenCiv]

I'm sure this won't hold up. :') But then, I'm a pessimist. Thanks, the one I saw online was VOA (the site) and for some reason broke off in the middle of a sentence, like the Timaeus.

[CurlyBill]

[Cold Heat]

Kinda like light which has properties of both matter and electromagnetic waves at the same time

Um.....ERrrr....."Subspace"?

Interesting....We have sure come a long way since space was a simple vacuum. I recall scientists were puzzled by speed variations in our explorer craft that had left the solar system and were still transmitting data. Something besides gravity was affecting them.

We may be getting closer to figuring out gravity....At least I hope so.

I have alway thought that dark matter was connected somehow. I'm saving up for my anti-grav suit.:-)(bad knees and hip)

[Boiler Plate]

Now if they can only find
"What's the matter?"
when talking to their wife/girlfriend.

Then they would really be on to something.

[Mark Felton]

We don't even understand why matter has mass.

We don't understand exactly what the force fields are (em, strong, weak, gravity), and why they interact with certain matter at a distance.

Think about, we call it a field, because it is a region in which some force exists that can apply a force to matetr without actually being matter itself.

Those fields have no mass, no matter, are invisible (foreget photons for now)...yet they have the power to "move mountains" of matter.

We know like charges repel, but we don't know why. etc etc

[Bender2]

Ping for later

[Cold Heat]

Yup, I am a electrician, and it is the fascination with it that caused me to get into the field. There is a great deal of effects that we use, and don't understand, like why the electrons flow on the outside circumference of the wire?. And of course magnetism that we have formulas for, yet only use something we don't understand.

The strange thing is that we have this same lack of understanding in most every field of work, including medicine and drugs for a great example.

These guys are making pills that create certain effects and don't have a clue as to why.

Physics is just one of many.....????????

[MadLibDisease]

Mark for later reading

[doc30]

AFAIK, it would be the same as our galaxy encountering a galaxy of visible matter of equal mass: they would pass through each other with virtually no star/star collisions (galaxies are mostly empty space). OTOH, there would be profound gravitational interactions -- many stars, clusters, etc. would be ripped out of their usual orbits and get flung all over the place. Lots of disruption possible from gravitational interactions.

Could be perilous for some planets, while others may go unscathed.

I agree with you completely on the isuee of the effects on planets and starts duting such a collision. What vexes me is the structure of dark matter. Does it form some type of "proton" or "electron"? Is it homogeneously distributed or is there some kind of structure behind it? Does it aggregate to form large masses the way normal matter forms planets and stars, or even simple dust grains? With all that mass, can dark matter form black holes? Are there different types of dark matter? Evidence of its existence, like this in the NASA report, is interesting, but it breeds a whole host of additional questions.

[BlazingArizona]

In this Hubble image, food approaching the Moore event horizon is sucked in and vanishes forever.

[Physicist]

I don't know what gives you guys the idea that "we don't understand" electromagnetism. The quantum theory of electromagnetism was in hand in the 1940's. The successor theory, which shows how it morphs into the weak nuclear force at high enough energies, was in hand in the 1960's; experiment only caught up to it in the 1980's. Theory and experiment agree to something like thirteen decimal places, and the same theory works quantitatively over an astonishing range of scales, from femtometers to tens of billions of light years.

Of course we understand things like magnetism, repulsion, and the flow of current around a wire. That understanding goes back more like 100 years.

Do we think the current theory is the final theory? No, but the corrections we gain from unification with the strong and/or gravitational forces will be so exquisitely subtle that they will be experimentally unmeasurable at any naturally occurring energy scale. In other words, the current theory will give numerically correct results for all natural occurrences.

It is widely considered that the modern theory of electromagnetism is the most perfect theory of anything ever constructed by the mind of man. There is simply no scientific subject that is more completely and correctly understood.

[SunkenCiv]

Ditching Dark Matter
The Guardian | Thursday February 13, 2003 | Marcus Chown
Posted on 02/15/2003 10:40:45 AM EST by Phaedrus
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/844020/posts

[SunkenCiv]

ET type IV civilization moves a pulsar from our Galaxy to another
India Daily | Aug. 20, 2006 | India Daily Technology Team
Posted on 08/21/2006 12:12:20 PM EDT by SunkenCiv
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1687423/posts