hubble's photos of regular matter and dark matter

See new, spectacular, or mysterious sky images.
Post Reply
kovil
Science Officer
Posts: 351
Joined: Thu Jan 26, 2006 1:58 pm

hubble's photos of regular matter and dark matter

Post by kovil » Thu Jan 25, 2007 4:52 am

the Hubble website has an article about dark matter and photo maps of what they think is its distribution in relationship to regular matter. What are they actually seeing tho, that is the question to me, as I am not a dark matter fan. I think many would like to read about this and see the photos, regardless of whether they are a fan of DM or not. It is a 1-7-07 article and so very recent.

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hubbl ... atter.html

DE and DM have been hot topics the last year !

User avatar
JohnD
Tea Time, Guv! Cheerio!
Posts: 1578
Joined: Wed Feb 16, 2005 2:11 pm
Location: Lancaster, England

Post by JohnD » Fri Jan 26, 2007 6:14 pm

kovil,
The aratcile is almost as obscure as dark matter itself!

But it does say,"The dark matter map was constructed by measuring the shapes of half a million faraway galaxies.

To reach Hubble, their light has had to travel through intervening dark matter, and the path of the light is slightly deflected by the dark matter’s gravity. The observed, subtle distortion of the galaxies’ shapes was used to reconstruct the distribution of intervening mass along Hubble’s line of sight – a method called weak gravitational lensing. "

Does that make sense to you?
I can see the idea, but I have to say that it is a bit like describing colour to the blind.

John

User avatar
JohnD
Tea Time, Guv! Cheerio!
Posts: 1578
Joined: Wed Feb 16, 2005 2:11 pm
Location: Lancaster, England

Post by JohnD » Fri Jan 26, 2007 6:14 pm

JohnD wrote:kovil,
The article is almost as obscure as dark matter itself!

But it does say,"The dark matter map was constructed by measuring the shapes of half a million faraway galaxies.

To reach Hubble, their light has had to travel through intervening dark matter, and the path of the light is slightly deflected by the dark matter’s gravity. The observed, subtle distortion of the galaxies’ shapes was used to reconstruct the distribution of intervening mass along Hubble’s line of sight – a method called weak gravitational lensing. "

Does that make sense to you?
I can see the idea, but I have to say that it is a bit like describing colour to the blind.

John

makc
Commodore
Posts: 2019
Joined: Tue Oct 12, 2004 5:25 pm

Post by makc » Wed Jun 20, 2007 10:13 am

QFE?

Post Reply