It looks like you're using an Ad Blocker.

Please white-list or disable AboveTopSecret.com in your ad-blocking tool.

Thank you.

 

Some features of ATS will be disabled while you continue to use an ad-blocker.

 

Interactive dark matter could explain Milky Way's missing satellite galaxies

page: 1
0

log in

join
share:

posted on Sep, 9 2014 @ 01:25 AM
link   
Interactive dark matter could explain Milky Way's missing satellite galaxies


Scientists believe they have found a way to explain why there are not as many galaxies orbiting the Milky Way as expected. Computer simulations of the formation of our galaxy suggest that there should be many more small galaxies around the Milky Way than are observed through telescopes.

This has thrown doubt on the generally accepted theory of cold dark matter, an invisible and mysterious substance that scientists predict should allow for more galaxy formation around the Milky Way than is seen.

Now cosmologists and particle physicists at the Institute for Computational Cosmology and the Institute for Particle Physics Phenomenology, at Durham University, working with colleagues at LAPTh College & University in France, think they have found a potential solution to the problem.

Writing in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (MNRAS), the scientists suggest that dark matter particles, as well as feeling the force of gravity, could have interacted with photons and neutrinos in the young Universe, causing the dark matter to scatter.

Scientists think clumps of dark matter -- or halos -- that emerged from the early Universe, trapped the intergalactic gas needed to form stars and galaxies. Scattering the dark matter particles wipes out the structures that can trap gas, stopping more galaxies from forming around the Milky Way and reducing the number that should exist.


There are several theories about why there are not more galaxies orbiting the Milky Way, which include the idea that heat from the Universe's first stars sterilised the gas needed to form stars. The researchers say their current findings offer an alternative theory and could provide a novel technique to probe interactions between other particles and cold dark matter.


It seems to me that most of our understanding of space/universe works father away from us but there are issues with it being up close. I can't recall what I was reading a while back. It was about how we were able to figure out something to do with light being emitted from stars & calculating it but it only worked for farther out in the universe & didn't work for our own backyard.



posted on Sep, 9 2014 @ 03:04 AM
link   
So much explanation is attributed to dark matter, yet we don't know what it is, and actually have no certain way to establish that it exists. This is probably my biggest problem with science; we take a hypothesis and make it an integral part of theory.



posted on Sep, 9 2014 @ 07:30 PM
link   
a reply to: wildespace

I dislike that too. We say it exists because of the math but what if we are wrong about that? We were wrong when we thought that elements only behaved a certain way but just recently learned that at higher pressures (2000 atmospheres and up) that they behave differently. 2000 atmospheres can easily be achieved naturally on Earth, imagine a Supernova.

Then there are the cases when the math works, but just not in a close proximity to us, it only works for the rest of the universe. This tells me that we have something wrong because we are missing something.

So much of science is hypothesis yet people boldly claim them as truths.



posted on Sep, 9 2014 @ 08:06 PM
link   
I think dark matter probably is the wya they say it's, but not exactly. You can't totally dismiss dark matter and dark energy because the evidence for it's stacking up. I don't think it's at the stage where it's as strong as some of Eintein's theories, but it's getting there. I think you have to at least acknowledge some dark matter or dark energy is out there. And yet there're many unknown about its true nature and interactions. Dark matter and/or energy may be nearly as dynamic and complex as the "normal" matter we see around us. Not all dark matter is the same. Some of dark matter interacts with more than one thing while other only interact with gravity.

Maybe we stereotype dark matter as simplistic and empty of complexity just because it's "dark" and so unseen to us? It's ill defined.
edit on 9-9-2014 by jonnywhite because: (no reason given)



new topics

top topics
 
0

log in

join