Thursday, August 24, 2006
Important Dark Matter News
I would have thought the debate over wether dark matter exists to be long over, afte all, simple mass calculation and gravitational lensing shows that galaxies contain more mass than can be accounted for by shiny stuff like stars. The controversy is over what the dark stuff is. Some of it is non-glowing gas and planets (and possibly neutrinos), but most people think the majority is some unusual form of matter.
Some stunning work from the Chandra X-ray telescope has thrown new light on Dark matter by mapping its distribution in colliding galaxies. The Chandra press release is here, and an ABC science article is here. For the best description of what it all means though, run, don't walk to Sean Carrolls' article at Cosmic Variance. The foolow that up with Mark Chu-Carrols' article at Good Math Bad Math.
# posted by Ian Musgrave @ 7:34 am 
Click to read about or order
Click to read about or order
Click to read about or order
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