Dark Matter
Category archives for Dark Matter
A Dark Matter Deluge
Posted by Ethan on January 11, 2012 “I soon became convinced… that all the theorizing would be empty brain exercise and therefore a waste of time unless one first ascertained what the population of the Universe really consists of.” -Fritz Zwicky Making the entire Universe isn’t easy. Even with 13.7 billion years of time, general relativity and all the known particles in…
The Status of Dark Matter
Posted by Ethan on October 21, 2011 “By now you must know that your father can never be turned from the Dark Side. So will it be with you.” -Emperor Palpatine, Return of the Jedi You’ve heard about dark matter. It’s the notion that the Universe is somehow very much different than the small corner of it that we’re most familiar with.…
A New Test of Dark Matter vs. Modified Gravity: Who Wins?
Posted by Ethan on October 11, 2011 “The best way to escape from a problem is to solve it.” -Alan Saporta One of the greatest puzzles in the Universe today is just why the Universe is structured the way it is. For the individual galaxies that we see, the puzzle is why they rotate at the speeds they do. If the only…
And the Temperature of Dark Matter is…?
Posted by Ethan on September 22, 2011 “A fact never went into partnership with a miracle. Truth scorns the assistance of wonders. A fact will fit every other fact in the universe, and that is how you can tell whether it is or is not a fact. A lie will not fit anything except another lie.” -Robert Green Ingersoll One of the…
Dark Matter Haters to the Left
Posted by Ethan on September 2, 2011 “When you make the finding yourself — even if you’re the last person on Earth to see the light — you’ll never forget it.” -Carl Sagan When we talk about dark matter and its alternatives, we are talking about no less a task than explaining the structure of every large object in the Universe. This…
The Universe is Biased!
Posted by Ethan on August 25, 2011 “Fortunately for serious minds, a bias recognized is a bias sterilized.” -Benjamin Haydon You might look up at the night sky, at the vast canopy of stars we can see, and ask, exactly, what we’re seeing? Thousands upon thousands of stars, of course, even with just your naked eye. These stars come in all sorts…
What Dark Matter’s Alternatives Must Do
Posted by Ethan on August 18, 2011 “The only relevant test of the validity of a hypothesis is comparison of prediction with experience.” -Milton Friedman Dark matter is one of the most important components of the Universe today. And yet in the public’s eye, almost no one accepts it the way, say, the Big Bang is accepted. But it should be, and…
Why Dark Matter Rules Mini-Galaxies!
Posted by Ethan on August 5, 2011 “A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.” -Max Planck (For Alan L., from the comments on this post.) When you look out at the night sky, with…
The Smallest Mini-Galaxy in the Universe!
Posted by Ethan on August 1, 2011 “Keep up the good work, if only for a while, if only for the twinkling of a tiny galaxy.” -Wislawa Szymborska Our Milky Way Galaxy is home to not only our Earth and our Solar System, but hundreds of billions of other stars. Held together by not only the incredible gravity of all of our…
What the WMAP image means
Posted by Ethan on July 29, 2011 “It has been rightly said that nothing is unimportant, nothing powerless in the universe; a single atom can dissolve everything, and save everything! What terror! There lies the eternal distinction between good and evil.” -Gerard De Nerval (For Rich C. and Sili, for their questions on this post.) The humble hydrogen atom — one proton…
