Giant ropes of dark matter found in new sky survey

Giant ropes of dark matter found in new sky survey

space.newscientist.com

Huge filaments of dark matter have been detected in a survey of thousands of distant galaxies. The discovery supports the idea that dark matter drove the formation of galaxies and larger cosmic structures and resolves a discrepancy in previous studies about how much dark matter the universe contains.
The survey, which is still ongoing, has already covered an area of the sky around 300 times the size of the Full Moon. Astronomers led by Liping Fu of the Institute of Astrophysics in Paris, France, have analysed data gathered by the 340-megapixel MegaCam – the largest astronomical camera in the world – attached to the 3.6-metre Canada France Hawaii Telescope (CFHT) in Hawaii, US.

(visit the link for the full news article)


Related News Links:
space.newscientist.com
space.newscientist.com
space.newscientist.com

Related AboveTopSecret.com Discussion Threads:
New discoveries are confirming electric sun theories.

A subtle effect called weak lensing was used to detect distortions in the shapes of galaxies caused by significant amounts of dark matter. The dark matter tended to accumulate in streams or ropes stretching as far as 270million light years.

These findings support the previous estimation by microwave studies that the universe is composed of 25% dark matter, 71% dark energy and 4% visible matter.

space.newscientist.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

I'm more interested in what this means for the Big Bang Theory that everyone has touted as being the true genesis of everything.

Sounds really cool to me. I'll be watching this. Nice catch.

TheBorg

reply to post by TheBorg


Hi again Borg,

The Big Bang is still the favored theory of origin and they're saying that the existance of these ropes of dark matter that they found supports the Big Bang. I'm reserving judgement. Do you have doubts?

Generally they are saying that the conversion from the primal material ( they aren't too sure what it really was) to what we see now was incomplete and there is still something floating around out there apparently in "ropes" that we can't see. And they call it dark matter.

Originally posted by plumranch
reply to post by TheBorg

 

Hi again Borg,

The Big Bang is still the favored theory of origin and they're saying that the existance of these ropes of dark matter that they found supports the Big Bang. I'm reserving judgement. Do you have doubts?

Generally they are saying that the conversion from the primal material ( they aren't too sure what it really was) to what we see now was incomplete and there is still something floating around out there apparently in "ropes" that we can't see. And they call it dark matter.

Sounds like something from HP Lovecraft. Are they sure these ropes arn't Pseudopods or Tentacles?

Maybe Magnum Tenebrosum spawn of Azathoth

Or a cabalist take, the Aleph Tenebrosum, like the Outer Darkness upon the face of the Deep in Genesis. The Chosech that existed before the Light, that could be felt in Exodus during one of the plagues , and shrouds Mt. Sinai later in Exodus.

Or we probably have no idea what were looking at and hundred years from now we'll look back think, what a bunch of goofballs.

reply to post by MikeboydUS

Or we probably have no idea what were looking at and hundred years from now we'll look back think, what a bunch of goofballs.

Hi Mike,

Astrophysicists seem to be able to look out there using various types of telescopes and determine what things are made of so maybe they will come up with something ingenous to analyse dark matter. Otherwise we wait till we can travel out there and pick some up or till some arrives in a meteor and we can send it down to the lab for analysis!

reply to post by plumranch


A substantial finding. It meansthat perhaps at least some galaxies are not held together with dark matter gravity but,instead, some other gravitational influence. The story sais that one explanation is Modified Newtonian Dynamics.

space.newscientist.com...

I've heard of MOND before but just becuase this galaxy doesn't have dark matter gravity around it currently, it doesn't mean that it wasn't there before (if the combimned mathematic models are even accurate). We know that something in deep space is holding together vast tendrils of galaxies (something we cannot see). Dark matter is a likely candidate. But direct observation isn't necessary to prove it's existence. We know that something with much more gravity than the galaxies themselves is at work over a huge area within our universe (the virgo supercluster is one example, there ar many others).

One of the more intersting dark energy theories i've heard are that dark energy consists of miniscule subatomic particles that blink in and out of existence extremely quickly throughout the universe. Over time, this would explain the expansion of the universe we observe today. It sounds really mythical and mysterious but we have no evidence to suggest that it exists other than the actual expansion of the universe itself.

In order to understand, mathematically, the expansion of the universe, you have to give such activity specific parameters (called the Equation of state). Scientists are still trying to do this. Such math requires extremely accurate data on the expansion of the universe itself. We just don't have that right now.

Some think that dark energy is the mythical cosmological constant itself. This would be somewhat supported if it becomes proven that dark energy permeates
all of known space. The miniscule, almost incomprehensibly small effect that dark energy would have throughout the known universe within this model could theoretically be indirectly calculated with current technology, again, by accurately assessing the rate of expansion of our current universe and working mathematically backwards to calculate how much energy this dark energy really has on an average, specifically measured cubic area of the cosmos. The effect may be small, but the overall effects of dark energy giving off small amounts of energy throughout the known universe is one very plausible explanation for the increased expansion of the universe since the big-bang. IMO It is obviously being caused by an unseen energy which has a substantial effect on the entire universe.

What we do know: In a way, The entire gravitational potential of the universe itself is being overpowered by a strange force that we cannot directly see or detect (at least with our current technology). That is an enormous amount of energy. The only reason dark energy really became a viable theory is because the mathematical models supported it's existence. An unknown force was making it's energy felt so widely throughout the universe that it is still inexplicably expanding in all directions today. The hubble space telescope has proven this expansion is considerable, yet we have no current scientific model as to why other than perhaps dark energy (which we still cannot prove exists one way or another).

-ChriS




[edit on 22-2-2008 by BlasteR]

[edit on 22-2-2008 by BlasteR]

They are looking at an effect, and attributing to it a cause in the form of dark matter. Perhaps instead of dark matter they instead found gigantic ropes (filaments) of plasma, as theorized within plasma cosmology. In my mind, several concepts in that article are cleared up when you replace 'ropes of dark matter' with 'filaments of plasma'.