Could a Faint Glow in the Milky Way Be Dark Matter? (space.com) 47
"A nearby galaxy once thought to be dominated by dark matter seems to have a surprise supermassive black hole at its centre," reports New Scientist.
Yet scientists "are convinced dark matter is out there," writes Space.com. "The quest to detect it arguably remains both one of the most frustrating and most exhilarating challenges in modern physics."
And now they report that the century-old mystery of dark matter — the invisible glue thought to hold galaxies together — "just got a modern clue." Scientists say they may be one step closer to confirming the existence of this elusive material, thanks to new simulations suggesting that a faint glow at the center of the Milky Way could be dark matter's long-sought signature. "It's very hard to actually prove, but it does seem likely," Moorits Muru of the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam in Germany, who led the new study, told Space.com...
The findings, show that dark matter near the Milky Way's center might not form a perfect sphere as scientists long thought. Instead, it appears flattened, almost egg-shaped, and that shape closely mirrors the pattern of mysterious gamma rays observed by NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope... Using powerful supercomputers, [the researchers] recreated how the Milky Way formed, including billions of years of violent collisions and mergers with smaller galaxies. Those violent events, the researchers found, left deep "fingerprints" on the way dark matter is distributed in the galactic core.... matching the pattern of gamma-ray emission Fermi has observed, the new study reports...
If the excess truly arises from dark matter collisions, it would mark the first indirect evidence that weakly interacting massive particles [WIMPs], a leading dark matter candidate, really exist...
"We have run dozens of direct detection experiments around the globe hunting for WIMPS," notes Phys.org, in an article titled "The Empty Search for Dark Matter." We have run dozens of direct detection experiments around the globe hunting for WIMPS — dark matter particles in this particular mass range. And they're not all the same kind of experiments. There are also the scintillators, which use a giant vat of liquefied noble gas, like several tons of xenon. They wait for a dark matter particle to strike the xenon and cause it to scintillate, which is a fancy science word for "sparkle." We see the sparkle; we detect dark matter...
They're just one example of a broader class of dark matter candidates, with delightful names like Q-balls, WIMPzillas, and sterile neutrinos. We've tuned our different experiments to capture different mass ranges or interaction strengths to cover as much of that wide dark matter spectrum as possible. We've even tried to manufacture various kinds of dark matter in our particle collider experiments.
And we've found nothing.
Yet scientists "are convinced dark matter is out there," writes Space.com. "The quest to detect it arguably remains both one of the most frustrating and most exhilarating challenges in modern physics."
And now they report that the century-old mystery of dark matter — the invisible glue thought to hold galaxies together — "just got a modern clue." Scientists say they may be one step closer to confirming the existence of this elusive material, thanks to new simulations suggesting that a faint glow at the center of the Milky Way could be dark matter's long-sought signature. "It's very hard to actually prove, but it does seem likely," Moorits Muru of the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam in Germany, who led the new study, told Space.com...
The findings, show that dark matter near the Milky Way's center might not form a perfect sphere as scientists long thought. Instead, it appears flattened, almost egg-shaped, and that shape closely mirrors the pattern of mysterious gamma rays observed by NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope... Using powerful supercomputers, [the researchers] recreated how the Milky Way formed, including billions of years of violent collisions and mergers with smaller galaxies. Those violent events, the researchers found, left deep "fingerprints" on the way dark matter is distributed in the galactic core.... matching the pattern of gamma-ray emission Fermi has observed, the new study reports...
If the excess truly arises from dark matter collisions, it would mark the first indirect evidence that weakly interacting massive particles [WIMPs], a leading dark matter candidate, really exist...
"We have run dozens of direct detection experiments around the globe hunting for WIMPS," notes Phys.org, in an article titled "The Empty Search for Dark Matter." We have run dozens of direct detection experiments around the globe hunting for WIMPS — dark matter particles in this particular mass range. And they're not all the same kind of experiments. There are also the scintillators, which use a giant vat of liquefied noble gas, like several tons of xenon. They wait for a dark matter particle to strike the xenon and cause it to scintillate, which is a fancy science word for "sparkle." We see the sparkle; we detect dark matter...
They're just one example of a broader class of dark matter candidates, with delightful names like Q-balls, WIMPzillas, and sterile neutrinos. We've tuned our different experiments to capture different mass ranges or interaction strengths to cover as much of that wide dark matter spectrum as possible. We've even tried to manufacture various kinds of dark matter in our particle collider experiments.
And we've found nothing.
Keep dreaming. (Score:3)
Re: Keep dreaming. (Score:3)
Why did geologists religiously stick to the premise that continents don't drift in spite of the extraordinary evidence of the coastlines of South America and Africa?
If your answer is "there was no mechanism" why did physics accept dark energy without a proposed mechanism?
Re: Keep dreaming. (Score:4, Interesting)
"Why did geologists religiously stick to the premise that continents don't drift in spite of the extraordinary evidence of the coastlines of South America and Africa?"
Because there was no proposed mechanism that could account for the phenomenon, as you observed, but you did not go far enough. When there became one, it took the geographers time to assess the model, make observations, check the quality of the researchers, etc. The common man looks at something and says "this is obvious". A scientist looks at something and wants to see the theory, model, and observations before declaring something is probably so. Even then, the book is still left open. We are still makes check on gravitation theory for the reason that the math, model, and observations are inline....except only up to a delta. That delta is the unknown.
Physicists accept dark energy as *likely*. And there is a proposed mechanism, the vacuum energy. We know it is there because we can measure it. Right now, dark energy is no constrained enough by theory for physicists to "accept" it as, they merely accept it as probably given out theories, our models, and our observations.
All theories start out at, I do not know but here's a possible mechanism. We do not just throw up our hands until some magical theory falls into our lap from the Theory Tree, fully formed with a model and observations.
Re: Keep dreaming. (Score:5, Funny)
Is science really just religion?
Yes science is just another religion, like any other. In religion if model's fails to perform useful predictions, or your observations contradicts the theory, you eventually rewrite all the texts to conform to current understanding of reality.
That's why we have corrected all of the inaccuracies in the Christian Bible and many documents, policies, and canon of the worlds many churchs. And would never have imprisoned a man for the rest of his life for contradicting church leaders on the observable fact that the Earth orbits the Sun.
Re: (Score:2)
In religion if model's fails to perform useful predictions, or your observations contradicts the theory, you eventually rewrite all the texts to conform to current understanding of reality.
Yeah? From experience, this happens only after you persecute and kill "heretics" in horrible ways for a thousand years.
That's why the Christian bible is still the law in half of the kingdom of Trumpistan even though now the torture and the killings are often done by the magic of magnets moving invisible shit in copper wires.
Re: Keep dreaming. (Score:2)
Are you aware that Hindus abandoned the sacrifice because karma, or the law of cause and effect, was violated when promised results did not follow?
When Jain tirthankars changed the religion by adding new vows, was that like a paradigm shift?
Is your view of religion ignorantly limited to just what you're familiar with?
Re: (Score:2)
Jainism describes forms of energy and effects that cannot be measures and cannot offer a useful predictive model.
And Christians pretend that they want to do everything that Jesus did, but won't beat the hell out of moneylenders, instead they put them on a pedestal and allow them to rule the top tiers of our society. That's a revisionism I can't get behind.
Re: (Score:2)
Better with sarcasm tags to avert Poe's Law? At least one of the moderators recognized the humor, but...
However I want to notice that I just read quite a good piece on this topic in Nexus by Yuval Harari. He finds a good level of abstraction for considering a lot of topics. Or maybe you should regard it as a proper framing thing? On this specific topic of religion he emphasizes that science involves corrective mechanisms, whereas religious texts start with the ridiculous claim that human artifacts (the te
Re: Keep dreaming. (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
What are those things that "don't exist", darling?
Nope (Score:5, Funny)
That's fairly easy to understand.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: Nope (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: Nope (Score:1)
There are unanswered questions now, as has always been.
For bonus points, try phrasing it as an actual sentence.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
There are unanswered questions now, as has always been.
For bonus points, try phrasing it as an actual sentence.
"Could you phrase that as a question?"
Mayim Bialik has left the room.
Re:Nope (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Nope (Score:5, Funny)
Beyonce, Taylor - meet Stephen Hawking.
Re:Nope (Score:5, Informative)
If it glows, it's not dark.
That's fairly easy to understand.
According to TFA, the dark matter isn't glowing. Instead, it is annihilating when it collides with another dark matter particle, which turns it into normal electrons and positrons, which then ionize normal gas and create the glow.
It's a long sequence of events, but in case it pans out, at least it might be able to address the unwillingness of most people to accept that something could possibly exist unless it somehow interacts with the electromagnetic field.
Re: (Score:3)
But that makes proving its existence very difficult.
Perhaps, but the universe doesn't owe you any easy explanations.
Re: (Score:1)
My fortune cookie said it did, dammit, and cookies have only been wrong once!
Re: Nope (Score:2)
I'm not a believer in dark matter exactly as much as it is a placeholder. I read that "they" found a shitton of matter in the inter galactic medium... uhhh... warm hot filaments
Re:Nope (Score:4, Insightful)
If it makes things glow, but doesn't glow itself, it is still dark.
There are experiments for example that look for dark matter particles (and it is pretty much settled that DM is particle-based, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]) that can decay into a standard model particle-antiparticle, although with a very small likelihood.
This isn't a far-fetched assumption if you accept that it is not unreasonable to suppose that some of what's unseen behaves by the same rules that what's seen does.
So, what will a large pile of this dark matter appear like if distributed as observations suggest?
Yes, it will make large areas around a galaxy glow faintly as those antiparticles annihilate.
DNRTFA, but I guess it is something along these lines.
Re: (Score:2)
If it makes things glow, but doesn't glow itself, it is still dark.
If a supermassive black hole takes a shit in the woods...
Re: (Score:1)
> If it glows, it's not dark.
Okay, but "Very very very very dim matter" is not very catchy.
Re: No (Score:2)
Is it wrong to think that a faint glow in the Milky Way is dark matter?
It's faintly glowing matter (Score:2)
Obviously.
Ultra diffuse galaxy segue 1 (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
hmmm thanks for the interesting info, but looking that up there may be new results for you to read about [space.com].
Betteridge's Law of Headlines (Score:2)
This is a speculation. If it were an actual finding, the headline would say "the Faint Glow IS Dark matter", not asking the question.
Re: Betteridge's Law of Headlines (Score:2)
Is the faint glow unrelated to dark matter?
"Dark" Matter? (Score:2)
So "Dark Matter" is just black holes? Didn't we already KNOW that?
Re: "Dark" Matter? (Score:2)
Would you need large black holes on the outsides of galaxies to account for some of their rotation curves?
Re: (Score:2)
So "Dark Matter" is just black holes? Didn't we already KNOW that?
No, the whole point is that it's not black holes there.
Dark matter / dark money (Score:2)
If you are trying to balance your books, and the numbers aren't adding up, you might suggest that there are mysterious kinds of transactions throwing things off, transactions that can't be seen or found through searches. But no accountant would accept that answer. Instead, they would look for missing or miscategorized transactions or incorrect calculations, or even fraud. All of those possibilities are a million times more likely than that some mysterious, untraceable "dark" transactions are throwing things
Re: (Score:2)
Look at the history of the neutrino, first postulated because the numbers for fusion weren't adding up so to balance the books was the idea of a dark particle (neutrinos do not interact with electromagnetism) with little or no mass came about. IIRC, it took about 30 years before a neutrino was detected as they do interact with the weak force (or is it the strong force, I get mixed up).
Now it seems the universe is full of neutrinos and yet we can barely detect them.
Flattened Oval? (Score:3)
No *possible* chance it's radiation created by infalling normal matter into the Milky Way's central black hole, right...