Apparently my layman's grasp of astrophysics is failing me.
I thought the term "dark matter" referred to the "missing" matter? The stuff that all the calculations say SHOULD be there, but that was not detectable?
... but I'm pretty sure that it's a different concept. What they've discovered are normal, everyday baryonic matter, the stuff that our bodies are made out, basically. Dark matter, and dark energy, are wierdness that we infer from the observable behaviors of the cosmos as a whole (the increase in the rate of the expansion of the universe) and galaxies in specific (they rotate as if there was a spherical distribution of matter around their cores, which is not what we observe). http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/ask_astro/answers/010104a.html
You are correct. This is normal matter which happens to be "dark" (as in, not part of glowy things like galaxies and stars), rather than "dark matter" (a term which means something specific in the context of cosmological theory).
You probably need to be at a university to read this, but here is a more accurate (albeit more technical) summary of the observations, from Nature:
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Date: 2005-02-04 08:27 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-04 08:34 pm (UTC)I thought the term "dark matter" referred to the "missing" matter? The stuff that all the calculations say SHOULD be there, but that was not detectable?
Or am I confusing a separate concept?
I'm not an expert ...
Date: 2005-02-04 08:52 pm (UTC)http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/ask_astro/answers/010104a.html
I'm an expert[*]
Date: 2005-02-04 09:45 pm (UTC)You probably need to be at a university to read this, but here is a more accurate (albeit more technical) summary of the observations, from Nature:
http://www.nature.com/cgi-taf/DynaPage.taf?file=/nature/journal/v433/n7025/full/433465a_fs.html
[*] For values of "expert" which include "physicist with a passing interest in cosmology" but not "physicist who works in the field."
Re: I'm an expert[*]
Date: 2005-02-04 11:23 pm (UTC)