Sunday, January 07, 2007

Dark Matter News


Another prediction of the book has come true.

Just the other day one prediction was verified, medium-sized Black Holes within galaxies. Today NATURE reports discovery of mass in regions previously thought to be empty voids. This map was produced by the Hubble Space Telescope's Cosmic Evolution Survey (COSMOS). The study used gravitational lensing to show where the mass really lies. Mass is measured by the contour lines, which do not line up with the visible matter.

"The existence of large clumps of isolated dark matter and visible matter flies in the face of everything we know," says cosmologist Carlos Frenk of the University of Durham, UK.

"There are plausible explanations for small areas of dark matter and visible matter existing in isolation," NATURE continues, "but these theories can't explain the large features visible on the COSMOS map."

Below are the next paragraphs from the book:

Astronomers Margaret Geller and John Huchra have been mapping galaxies since 1985. Today the Sloan Digital Sky Survey has mapped a slice of the visible Universe. Galaxies and clusters form enormous sheets stretching across millions of light-years. These great walls are boundaries of vast bubbles containing most of the Universe’s volume.

A fish in the Barrier Reef avoids dark holes in the coral, because they could hide something that could eat her! One hopes that humans are more intelligent than fish. It would be foolish to think that humans know everything in the Universe, or to assume that the “voids” are empty. Something may indeed be in those dark places, something hungrier and more massive than humans have imagined.

Theory predicts that quantum fluctuations near the time of the Big Bang could have created singularities of almost unlimited size. The largest would be true Black Holes devouring everything within reach. In the early Universe they would have cleared whole regions of matter. Models predict that about 71.62% of mass in the Universe would end up in such regions. Since the Cosmic Microwave Background dates from 380,000 years after the Big Bang, this majority of mass would not show up in the CMB. The fragile spaces in between, balanced in a tug-of-war between masses, would form sheets where galaxies could form. Magnified by expansion of the Universe, the picture would look exactly like what Sloan has seen.

3 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hey Babe, this is exciting news! Please keep us astrophysics by-standers posted.

By the way, you have been tagged in a silly blog game, Five Things. Check it out in http://dorigo.wordpress.com/2007/01/08/five-things/ .

Cheers,
T.

1:57 AM  
Blogger Mahndisa S. Rigmaiden said...

01 08 07

Hello Louise:
Now this is the type of evidence I like to see when refuting mainstream ideas. It has always seemed like Dark Matter was as much of an ad hoc hypothesis as the cosmological constant. And it is quite exciting to see the orthodoxists ideas get blown out of the water by actual OBSERVATIONS!!! This is quite an exciting time for scientific discovery and a time for the rules to be rewritten and recast.

Best Wishes for the New Year!

11:41 AM  
Blogger L. Riofrio said...

Hi TD, 007 is turning into a good year. Mahndisa, it is always a pleasure hearing from you. Evidence from reality will eventually distinguish theory from speculation. I appreciate the patience you have shown too.

I will answer the silly game informally:

1. Member of Screen Actors Guild

2. Qualified to fly in Navy aircraft.

3. Owns a Star Trek uniform

4. Had first aeroplane accident at age 15.

5. First appeared on television at age 4.

I can informally suggest friends Kea, Nigel and Mahndisa, if that is ok. (no obligations)

1:58 PM  

Post a Comment

<< Home

Locations of visitors to this page