Mysterious, Invisible Dark Matter Exists! New Research Confirms (Weekend Feature)

 

          


In April,  astronomers with the European Southern Observatory led by Christian Moni-Bidin of the University of Concepcion in Chile raised eyebrows by suggesting that our cosmic neighborhood is empty of the extra mass needed to hold the galaxy together. But researchers Jo Bovy and Scott Tremaine from the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, NJ, have submitted a paper claiming that the results reported by Moni Biden et al are “incorrect”, and based on an “invalid assumption” of the motions of stars within — and above — the plane of the galaxy.

The most popular current theories say that dark matter is a hitherto undetected particle called a WIMP (weakly interacting massive particle. But several underground detectors searching for the elusive WIMPs have come up empty, or with conflicting results. If the galaxy is so full of dark matter, why hasn't it been detected yet?

The ESO team, led by Christian Moni Bidin of the Universidad de Concepción in Chile, mapped over 400 stars near our Sun, spanning a region approximately 13,000 light-years in radius to estimate the mass of matter – visible and dark – in the sun's local neighborhood. . Their report identified a quantity of material that matched what could be directly observed: stars, gas, and dust… but no dark matter. “Our calculations show that it should have shown up very clearly in our measurements,” Bidin had stated, “but it was just not there!”

Dark matter is the mysterious, invisible stuff that makes up 83 per cent of the matter in the universe. It is responsible for keeping galaxies from flying apart and has aided our understanding of how structures in the universe formed.

The primary flaw of the ESO team is that they assumed that the stars' speeds would be the same no matter how far they were from the galactic centre. Observations of dust clumps have shown that this assumption is true for young stars orbiting in the galactic disc, which mostly move in a near-perfect circle. But stars that orbit high above or far below the central disc can't have circular orbits, according to Jo Bovy says. The only stars that reach such great heights have been pushed from the disc by matter in the galaxy's spiral arms, which sent them on highly elliptical orbits.

"By assuming that stars rotate at the same velocity no matter at what distance they are from the centre of the Galaxy, they underestimated the total amount of matter in the solar neighbourhood and they concluded that there was no room for dark matter," said Bovy.

Bovy and Tremaine studies the ESO data and found that the amount of dark matter in the sun's neighbourhood agrees with previous predictions – if anything, there might be a little more nearby dark matter than we thought before. "We are now sure that the local dark matter density is what experimental particle physicists have long assumed when running their experiments," the team concluded.

The image at the top of the page shows the outer "halo" region of the Milky Way, as with other galaxies, contains the vast majority of the mass of the Galaxy. Yet the exact mass and shape of the halo are not known. Unlike the Galaxy's spiral arms, which contain bright stars, the halo is mostly dark. The few stars in the halo are the oldest stars in the Galaxy, and include the globular clusters, but they can account for only a small fraction of the halo's mass. Understanding the exact nature of the Milky Way halo may help to explain dark matter, which as the Princeton team asserts, seems to pervade the universe.

 

           

The Daily Galaxy via arxiv.org, newscientist.com and universetoday.com

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Comments

[MarionScott]

I wish they would stop stating 'dark matter' as fact unless they have concrete proof. Thats like saying Jen is a wonderful woman who is gonna have my children, but I am not sure she is attracted to me let alone exists. The idea is good but there may be other options to Jenny..

[Bob Greenwade]

I kind of doubt that MarionScott's demand for "concrete proof" would be enough. There's more "concrete proof" for dark matter just in this study than I've seen for many things currently taken as positively proven, such as evolution, but anyone who questions such things are subject to public ridicule.

Besides that, there have been things that have been widely doubted even after concrete proof has been presented, ranging from the existence of the platypus to the frequency theory of smell.

Nor to I understand the analogy/metaphor with Jen, at all -- at least, now it applies to this.

[George Botha]

Pardon me for being pedantic, but Marion is right. Instead of saying "Dark matter is the mysterious, invisible stuff that makes up 83 per cent of the matter in the universe" it would at this stage be scientifically more correct to say "Dark matter is presumed to be some mysterious, invisible stuff that apparently makes up approximately 83 per cent of the matter in the universe".

[molosser]

Dear Bob,
"...such as evolution, but anyone who questions such things are subject to public ridicule."

You may question anything science has to offer. Let me guess what your substitute for evolution is.... a god?
Now THAT would be ridiculous!

[Humberto Sarkis]

Talking about dark matter today is like discussing ether a few centuries back. There are other theories that don't challenge reason as much, i.e. variable gravity.

[Cassandra]

There was a report out a few weeks ago that argued that the 'dark matter' was unlikely to exist, because a new study of a local galaxy found that its mass had been under-estimated by the amount attributed to 'dark matter'.

The gist was that new and improved observation technology was revealing large numbers of stellar material that was so low in luminescence, older technology did not pick it up - and there was enough of this material to account for the "missing mass" from which the theory of dark matter arose.

[smartypants]

And yet we have another % number for "dark matter". Every theoretician seems to have a different % they are trying to prove. I remember the last time I said this one of the replys has "dark energy" with the highest % number.

And I agree Marion. It would help everyone to understand that these are just "theorys" and will be tweaked many times in the next decade or 2 and may just get tweaked out of the picture completely.

And Bob, you are right. Evolution is FALSE! But I will back you as they public ridicule you over it. ;)

[twistedphilosophy]

@smartypants
I'm curious as to what your evidence is supporting your conviction that evolution is false. You say it in such a way (ALL CAPS) that you seem to be completely convinced. Do you have any evidence supporting this? A few pointers for when you comment on a science post:
1. Use correct spelling and grammar or try to make errors not so obvious.
2. When challenging a theory, make sure you have a good counterargument.

[twistedphilosophy]

@smartypants
Disregard my previous comment. My so-called "friend" seems to think it's funny to post comments under my handle while I'm away.

[Donal]

@twistedphilosophy

Your friend was 100% correct in every aspect of his/her comment, so lay off.

I honestly cant believe there are people on here questioning the merits of evolution.

Its not a theory, its a fact. Deal with it.

ps.

The standard of grammar and spelling in most of the above comments is appalling. How do you expect anyone to take you seriously when you spell 'theories' with a 'Y' :-)

[hiding behind our keyboards]

The keyboard warriors have invaded yet another Internet article

[smartypants]

twistedphilosophy
I felt no insult about the post. I will still reply if wanted. BUT the grammar gets no better and my "errors" will still be there. If its below anyones standards, they really dont need to read them.

Donal
Same for you too. If you feel insulted because the grammer is wrong, dont read it. OR read it and whine. I dont use the name "perfect grammar" and really dont care if its not up to other peoples par.

Also, had you read Bobs post, he is NOT against evolution. Even he knows I was joking on this (or at least i think he does) but there seems to always be a few that feel insulted when they misread something or not read something and feel that superiority bug flare. OOOOOOOhhh, BAD smartypants, time to sit in the corner again.

[Glenn Mcconnochie]

Hi,why do your source links never work? It's really annoying!

[Xavier]

@Glenn Mcconnochie

The reason the links do not function properly is due to the webmaster entering the URL in an incomplete manner. They are posting the links using only www. instead of http://www.
This causes the page coding to believe it is a web page on this domain tiered under this page; http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2012/05/www.universetoday.com
Had they entered it with http:// it would link properly to http://www.universetoday.com

The "http://arxiv.org" link functions properly, directing the link to another domain using http://
The other links are only entered using www.
Just open the link or copy/paste it and remove everything in the address bar before the URL at the end.

http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2012/05/www.universetoday.com
Becomes:
www.universetoday.com

It's a minor issue that takes no more than 1 second for the poster to correct. Taking an additional 10 seconds the webmaster could make a single adjustment to the code of the news submit form so they could still enter www. and it would automatically convert it to http://www.

That is, if they even noticed the issue or care to resolve it.

[George Botha]

I can really understand why there is such a controversy over evolution. The weird and wonderful products of evolution in the myriad life forms of our own planet are all around us for everybody to behold (just take the anglerfish and venus fly trap for example).

Yet the mechanism of evolution seems to be somewhat enigmatic, precisely because such ingenious diversity as is observed does not seem to be simply the outcome of systematic duplication with a few random mutations thrown in, from which the most successful thrives and the rest is gradually eliminated (although this process certainly forms the backbone of it all).

So either we don't yet understand all the complex interactive properties of what we mechanistically call matter, or there is something supernatural involved, something as philosophically problematic as the very concept of free will ....

[Ivar Nielsen]

@George Botha, you wrote:

"Instead of saying "Dark matter is the mysterious, invisible stuff that makes up 83 per cent of the matter in the universe" it would at this stage be scientifically more correct to say "Dark matter is presumed to be some mysterious, invisible stuff that apparently makes up approximately 83 per cent of the matter in the universe".

AD: I´ll second that very much! And I´ll add this: " . . . apparantly, accordingly to the standing cosmological theories of which several are in conflict with each other and even with itself", makes up . . . in the observable part of the universe."

Natural Philosopher
Ivar Nielsen

[Michael McDonnough (@wayouttheredude)]

I do not think our current observation technology alone is a sufficient method to determine the total mass in the universe. Given the fact that massive objects can distort the fabric of space there might be a lot of matter which we just can not observe due to very distant massive objects distorting the shape of space time. How can we know unless we have widely separated observatories (Light Years apart) that can record the difference in the observation information from these distant localities. These observatories would have to be linked up with quantum entangled communications systems to correlate this data in real time. When we are at that level of technology we might be able to peer more closely into the subject of the actual mass of the observable universe with some chance of an informing observation being accomplished. Until then we are not much more than smart little animals making wild assumptions with very limited data from which to form such lofty opinions.

[Justin]

Anyone claiming there is more evidence for dark matter than evolution should be made sterile. Sorry, but it is what it is, and we don't need more complete morons on the Earth, I prefer not to live inside the movie Idiocracy.

[Lee]

@George Botha, awesome post but I have something on your problem with free will.

First of all, It eludes me why electromagnetic fields and the transference of plasma through the universe are not considered in any theory on dark matter.

George, you mentioned the systematic duplication of life with a few mutations regarding the diversity of life. I would like to suggest that the diversity of life is a result of the rate of mutations in the biosphere caused by the effect of the cosmic ray flux, thus being driven by a higher galactic process.
Sense perception tells us that the universe is evolving into a higher more complex state and if the end product is predetermined then what we perceive as free will is a requirement for its development. The galactic processes we observe in the Universe do well at breaking down compounds into usable elements to allow for the existence of life, but it is only sentient life that can harness its power and further break down these elements for creative development that would otherwise be impossible. This means that human beings by virtue of their creative powers are a manifestation of a creative Universe.

Most of us today have the tendency to think that we have now evolved to a point outside of nature and our technology is a negative force on it, when in reality we may be a very important part of it.
In a thousand years from now one may look back towards the Earth’s position in the milky way and see a progression of blue planets that never existed before the creative powers of Man. Will our ancestors think of this expansion of the biosphere into the cosmos as entirely the result of the will of man or is a part of a microcosmical process of a higher order?

[Mark D]

Humberto Sarkis' point that talk of Dark Matter recalls long-past debates about 'the Ether' is a fair one. Nothing is proved. Even the size of our galaxy is still open to conjecture or the mass and measurable gravitational influence of the conjectured 'super-massive black hole at the centre of the Milky Way...

It is easy to accept and enjoy the spoon feeding of theories and claims. Other concepts about the birth, age and evolution of [our region of] the universe may prove just as stimulating and more feasible.

[Ivar Nielsen]

THE "ETHER" AND THE COSMIC MICROWAVE BACKGROUND

Are really the very same. It is in this hydrogenic "cosmic soup" that everything in the Universe is eternally created via assembling and dissolving processes.

The Ether could really be called the “Universal Amniotic Fluid" in which all creation takes place. It is in this "fluid" that all universal connections and communication takes place - all over the place in the same instants.

Ancient Stories of Creation called the Ether "The Primeval Waters" of both female and male character and qualities.

- All the supposed missing "dark matter and energy" origin from the "linear BB cosmology" and the confusion of "gravity" for natural thermo-dynamically; hydro-dynamically and magneto-dynamically swirling movements in the universe.

NB I really don´t know why DailyGalaxy keeps these kind of "dark magic"-articles coming!?

Ivar Nielsen
Natural Philosopher

[PP]

"Dark matter" will one day be considered one of the dumbest theories ever... It's pre-scientific reasoning posing as science.

[Ralph Garner]

I would look for another set of laws and mathematics just as Quantum physics differs from Physics. Einstein would have had a problem with this also. I still believe that Dark matter and energy are the basic elements of the universe and the known visible universe is a direct product of dark matter and energy. Black holes created in dark energy may be the basic machinery that produced everything in the visible universe.

[Ralph Garner]

I have no doubt that there was something permeating the entire space of the cosmos before the Big Bang and that would be Dark Matter and Dark Energy. The junk from invisible Dark Energy and Mass was transformed into visible mass and energy. Hence we are surrounded with invisible mass and energy. Perhaps it could really be called Anti-Mass and anti energy.

[Ruth Mc]

But smartypants, your spelling has been so much better of late..
It seems to go downhill when you get upset though. Calm down, la!