Miami

Bling · 01-08-2007, 09:15 AM

The universe gives up its deepest secret

It is the invisible material that makes up most of the cosmos. Now, scientists have created the first image of dark matter
By Steve Connor, Science Editor
Published: 08 January 2007
One of the greatest mysteries of the universe is about to be unravelled with the first detailed, three-dimensional map of dark matter - the invisible material that makes up most of the cosmos.

Astronomers announced yesterday that they have achieved the apparently impossible task of creating a picture of something that has defied every attempt to detect it since its existence was first postulated in 1933.

Scientists have known for many years that there is more to the universe than can be seen or detected through their telescopes but it is only now that they have been able to capture the first significant 3D-image of this otherwise invisible material.

Unlike the ordinary matter of the planets, stars and galaxies, which can be seen through telescopes or detected by scientific instruments, nobody has seen dark matter or knows what it is made of, though calculations suggest that it is at least six times bigger than the rest of the visible universe combined.

A team of 70 astronomers from Europe, America and Japan used the Hubble space telescope to build up a picture of dark matter in a vast region of space where some of the galaxies date back to half the age of the universe - nearly 7 billion years.

They used a phenomenon known as gravitational lensing, first predicted by Albert Einstein, to investigate an area of the sky nine times the size of a full moon. Gravitational lensing occurs when light from distant galaxies is bent by the gravitational influence of any matter that it passes on its journey through space.

The scientists were able to exploit the technique by collecting the distorted light from half a million faraway galaxies to reconstruct some of the missing mass of the universe which is otherwise invisible to conventional telescopes.

"We have, for the first time, mapped the large-scale distribution of dark matter in the universe," said Richard Massey of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, one of the lead scientists in the team. "Dark matter is a mysterious and invisible form of matter, about which we know very little, yet it dominates the mass of the universe."

One of the most important discoveries to emerge from the study is that dark matter appears to form an invisible scaffold or skeleton around which the visible universe has formed.

Although cosmologists have theorised that this would be the case, the findings are dramatic proof that their calculations are correct and that, without dark matter, the known universe that we can see would not be able to exist.

"A filamentary web of dark matter is threaded through the entire universe, and acts as scaffolding within which the ordinary matter - including stars, galaxies and planets - can later be built," Dr Massey said. "The most surprising aspect of our map is how unsurprising it is. Overall, we seem to understand really well what happens during the formation of structure and the evolution of the universe," he said.

The three-dimensional map of dark matter was built up by taking slices through different regions of space much like a medical CT scanner build a 3-D image of the body by taking different X-ray "slices" in two dimensions.

Data from the Hubble telescope was supplemented by measurements from telescopes on the ground, such as the Very Large Telescope of the European Southern Observatory in Chile and the Japanese Subaru telescope in Hawaii.

Details of the dark matter map were released yesterday at the annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Seattle and published online by the journal Nature. The map stretches half way back to the beginning of the universe and shows that dark matter has formed into "clumps" as it collapsed under gravity. Other matter then grouped around these clumps to form the visible stars, galaxies and planets.

"The 3-D information is vital to studying the evolution of the structures over cosmic time," said Jason Rhodes of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena.

Astronomers have compared the task of detecting dark matter to the difficulty of photographing a city at night from the air when only street lights are visible.

Scientists said the new images were equivalent to seeing a city, its suburbs and country roads in daylight for the first time. Major arteries and intersections become evident and a variety of neighbourhoods are revealed.

"Now that we have begun to map out where dark matter is, the next challenge is to determine what it is, and specifically its relationship to normal matter," Dr Massey said. "We have answered the first question about where the dark matter it, but the ultimate goal will be to determine what it is."

Various experiments on Earth are under way to try to find out what dark matter is made of. One theory is that it is composed of mysterious sub-atomic particles that are difficult to detect because they do not interact with ordinary matter and so cannot be picked up and identified by conventional scientific instruments. Comparing the maps of visible matter and dark matter have already pointed to anomalies that could prove critical to the understanding of what constitutes dark matter.

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/...cle2134891.ece

swirlundergrounder · 01-08-2007, 11:52 AM

So where is this image of the 'Dark Matter'..

Pretty freaky to think that something like 99% of the Universe is made up of something that we can't even see..

Bling · 01-08-2007, 12:52 PM

i was lookin for it myself. i want to see it too

Slide On The Ice · 01-08-2007, 02:31 PM

I'm confused, still in the dark on this. ???

Maybe Dark Matter is God's power and influence?

Maybe Dark Matter is gravity. Scientists say that every single thing in the universe is affected by the gravity of something else, which means that the touch/pull of gravity extends between every single object...like the Force...and is everywhere.
I didn't read your article yet Bling, but I had read about Dark Matter before, that it has the opposite affect of gravity, and is the force that is pushing things away and causing the galaxies to expand. So my guess is that although it is doing the opposite of gravity, repelling instead of attracting, it is itself a form of gravity; and that gravity/dark matter is the AC/DC of the universe: both causing the opposite affect on the galaxy, but both still part of the same power and law of physics.

Maybe Dark Matter is simply the force of inertia, which to me seems, like I wrote, the opposite of gravity but yet the same thing.

swirlundergrounder · 01-08-2007, 04:57 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Slide

I'm confused, still in the dark on this. ???

Maybe Dark Matter is God's power and influence?

Maybe Dark Matter is gravity. Scientists say that every single thing in the universe is affected by the gravity of something else, which means that the touch/pull of gravity extends between every single object...like the Force...and is everywhere.
I didn't read your article yet Bling, but I had read about Dark Matter before, that it has the opposite affect of gravity, and is the force that is pushing things away and causing the galaxies to expand. So my guess is that although it is doing the opposite of gravity, repelling instead of attracting, it is itself a form of gravity; and that gravity/dark matter is the AC/DC of the universe: both causing the opposite affect on the galaxy, but both still part of the same power and law of physics.

Maybe Dark Matter is simply the force of inertia, which to me seems, like I wrote, the opposite of gravity but yet the same thing.

That's the thing that's freaky about dark matter.

Everything that you can see with a telescope or things that we can see/detect through mathematics, the combined mass of all those things is but a small fraction of the size of the known universe.

In a nutshell there is basically not enough mass in the visible universe to logically hold it together. According to what we can see with math and the naked eye, everything should be flying apart faster than it already is and the Universe should have no structure to it what so ever.

The 'Visible Universe' has somewhat of a stucture to it and something, some force has to be holding it togehter. So scientists came up with the theory of 'Dark Matter' to explain this unknown force that is keeping everything from flying apart.

And now they have a picture of it???

This has got to be a joke of some kind...

How do you take a picture of something that you can only prove exsists thorugh math?

I can't wait to see it.

We'll see if this beats the 3D image they came out with of the known universe several years ago...

lyrik · 01-08-2007, 05:12 PM

http://www.warpedpassages.com/

Caught this lady on some PBS talkshow...Charlie Rose?? I don't know if it was PBS or not it was pretty late at night but there is a link on her site to the interview...pretty interesting theories she has.

swirlundergrounder · 01-08-2007, 05:46 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by LyriK

http://www.warpedpassages.com/

Caught this lady on some PBS talkshow...Charlie Rose?? I don't know if it was PBS or not it was pretty late at night but there is a link on her site to the interview...pretty interesting theories she has.

WTF are you doing posting on this thread? Shouldn't you be helping Lovie pack his things for the early cruise?

lyrik · 01-08-2007, 06:14 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by T_rr_

[quote author=LyriK link=board=6;threadid=35770;start=0#msg405659 date=1168290777]
http://www.warpedpassages.com/

Caught this lady on some PBS talkshow...Charlie Rose?? I don't know if it was PBS or not it was pretty late at night but there is a link on her site to the interview...pretty interesting theories she has.

WTF are you doing posting on this thread? Shouldn't you be helping Lovie pack his things for the early cruise?
[/quote]

Better take it easy...the more shit you talk the worse it feels when it all comes crashing down!

aaaaaand you know I won't be Mr. Nice guy...I'll find time to log on from the boat just to remind you how aweful the seachickens looked.

swirlundergrounder · 01-08-2007, 07:49 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by LyriK

[quote author=T_rr_ Ja_in_o link=board=6;threadid=35770;start=0#msg405680 date=1168292817]
[quote author=LyriK link=board=6;threadid=35770;start=0#msg405659 date=1168290777]
http://www.warpedpassages.com/

Caught this lady on some PBS talkshow...Charlie Rose?? I don't know if it was PBS or not it was pretty late at night but there is a link on her site to the interview...pretty interesting theories she has.

WTF are you doing posting on this thread? Shouldn't you be helping Lovie pack his things for the early cruise?
[/quote]

Better take it easy...the more shit you talk the worse it feels when it all comes crashing down!

aaaaaand you know I won't be Mr. Nice guy...I'll find time to log on from the boat just to remind you how aweful the seachickens looked.
[/quote]Oh the risk of talking shit is great. But the reward is much greater as the underdog.... ;D

If the Seahawks win you'll have to put one of those 'Fat Head 'Seahawk helmets on your TV room...

01-08-2007, 09:15 AM	#1 (permalink)
Bling MegaJunkie Join Date: Jun 2003 Posts: 20,391	The Universe Gives up its "Darkest" Secret Registered members do not see ads. Register or logon for a better view. The universe gives up its deepest secret It is the invisible material that makes up most of the cosmos. Now, scientists have created the first image of dark matter By Steve Connor, Science Editor Published: 08 January 2007 One of the greatest mysteries of the universe is about to be unravelled with the first detailed, three-dimensional map of dark matter - the invisible material that makes up most of the cosmos. Astronomers announced yesterday that they have achieved the apparently impossible task of creating a picture of something that has defied every attempt to detect it since its existence was first postulated in 1933. Scientists have known for many years that there is more to the universe than can be seen or detected through their telescopes but it is only now that they have been able to capture the first significant 3D-image of this otherwise invisible material. Unlike the ordinary matter of the planets, stars and galaxies, which can be seen through telescopes or detected by scientific instruments, nobody has seen dark matter or knows what it is made of, though calculations suggest that it is at least six times bigger than the rest of the visible universe combined. A team of 70 astronomers from Europe, America and Japan used the Hubble space telescope to build up a picture of dark matter in a vast region of space where some of the galaxies date back to half the age of the universe - nearly 7 billion years. They used a phenomenon known as gravitational lensing, first predicted by Albert Einstein, to investigate an area of the sky nine times the size of a full moon. Gravitational lensing occurs when light from distant galaxies is bent by the gravitational influence of any matter that it passes on its journey through space. The scientists were able to exploit the technique by collecting the distorted light from half a million faraway galaxies to reconstruct some of the missing mass of the universe which is otherwise invisible to conventional telescopes. "We have, for the first time, mapped the large-scale distribution of dark matter in the universe," said Richard Massey of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, one of the lead scientists in the team. "Dark matter is a mysterious and invisible form of matter, about which we know very little, yet it dominates the mass of the universe." One of the most important discoveries to emerge from the study is that dark matter appears to form an invisible scaffold or skeleton around which the visible universe has formed. Although cosmologists have theorised that this would be the case, the findings are dramatic proof that their calculations are correct and that, without dark matter, the known universe that we can see would not be able to exist. "A filamentary web of dark matter is threaded through the entire universe, and acts as scaffolding within which the ordinary matter - including stars, galaxies and planets - can later be built," Dr Massey said. "The most surprising aspect of our map is how unsurprising it is. Overall, we seem to understand really well what happens during the formation of structure and the evolution of the universe," he said. The three-dimensional map of dark matter was built up by taking slices through different regions of space much like a medical CT scanner build a 3-D image of the body by taking different X-ray "slices" in two dimensions. Data from the Hubble telescope was supplemented by measurements from telescopes on the ground, such as the Very Large Telescope of the European Southern Observatory in Chile and the Japanese Subaru telescope in Hawaii. Details of the dark matter map were released yesterday at the annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Seattle and published online by the journal Nature. The map stretches half way back to the beginning of the universe and shows that dark matter has formed into "clumps" as it collapsed under gravity. Other matter then grouped around these clumps to form the visible stars, galaxies and planets. "The 3-D information is vital to studying the evolution of the structures over cosmic time," said Jason Rhodes of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. Astronomers have compared the task of detecting dark matter to the difficulty of photographing a city at night from the air when only street lights are visible. Scientists said the new images were equivalent to seeing a city, its suburbs and country roads in daylight for the first time. Major arteries and intersections become evident and a variety of neighbourhoods are revealed. "Now that we have begun to map out where dark matter is, the next challenge is to determine what it is, and specifically its relationship to normal matter," Dr Massey said. "We have answered the first question about where the dark matter it, but the ultimate goal will be to determine what it is." Various experiments on Earth are under way to try to find out what dark matter is made of. One theory is that it is composed of mysterious sub-atomic particles that are difficult to detect because they do not interact with ordinary matter and so cannot be picked up and identified by conventional scientific instruments. Comparing the maps of visible matter and dark matter have already pointed to anomalies that could prove critical to the understanding of what constitutes dark matter. http://news.independent.co.uk/world/...cle2134891.ece __________________ the system is down....the system is down

01-08-2007, 11:52 AM	#2 (permalink)
swirlundergrounder MegaJunkie Join Date: Mar 2004 Posts: 11,566	Re:The Universe Gives up its "Darkest" Secret So where is this image of the 'Dark Matter'.. Pretty freaky to think that something like 99% of the Universe is made up of something that we can't even see.. __________________ I'M AN ACID TRIP IN AN EGG ROLL....

01-08-2007, 12:52 PM	#3 (permalink)
Bling MegaJunkie Join Date: Jun 2003 Posts: 20,391	Re:The Universe Gives up its "Darkest" Secret i was lookin for it myself. i want to see it too __________________ the system is down....the system is down

01-08-2007, 02:31 PM	#4 (permalink)
Slide On The Ice CoolJunkie Join Date: Mar 2005 Location: Deerfield Beach Posts: 2,199	Re:The Universe Gives up its "Darkest" Secret I'm confused, still in the dark on this. ??? Maybe Dark Matter is God's power and influence? Maybe Dark Matter is gravity. Scientists say that every single thing in the universe is affected by the gravity of something else, which means that the touch/pull of gravity extends between every single object...like the Force...and is everywhere. I didn't read your article yet Bling, but I had read about Dark Matter before, that it has the opposite affect of gravity, and is the force that is pushing things away and causing the galaxies to expand. So my guess is that although it is doing the opposite of gravity, repelling instead of attracting, it is itself a form of gravity; and that gravity/dark matter is the AC/DC of the universe: both causing the opposite affect on the galaxy, but both still part of the same power and law of physics. Maybe Dark Matter is simply the force of inertia, which to me seems, like I wrote, the opposite of gravity but yet the same thing. __________________ Be inspired by the light within: http://www.myspace.com/inspireshine

01-08-2007, 05:12 PM	#6 (permalink)
lyrik CoolJunkie Join Date: Jul 2003 Posts: 4,909	Re:The Universe Gives up its "Darkest" Secret http://www.warpedpassages.com/ Caught this lady on some PBS talkshow...Charlie Rose?? I don't know if it was PBS or not it was pretty late at night but there is a link on her site to the interview...pretty interesting theories she has.

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