Scientists are Mapping the Dark Matter Web.

Shadowprophet

Truthiness
So, Dark Matter is a little tricky to introduce as a Conversation piece so, Bear with me and allow me to try.

Dark matter is composed of particles that do not absorb, reflect, or emit light, so it can't be detected using traditional radio telescopes, You can't see it with the naked eye but we know it exists because of its effects on objects that we can see. It's Believed That Dark Matter Takes up about 85 percent of the total mass in the universe this includes energy. <-- Honestly That's the best I can do here, without dedicating Chapters to just explaining what it is, With the final chapter being the testification that We don't really know what it is...

With that out of the way, We are apparently Mapping Dark matter and have been for a while.
800wm

So, There was an interesting article about this in the news this morning, Apparently, we now have a more complete map than ever before, and it's a really huge deal.

yuegp.jpg

So, Here is an article about the issue Sourced to Wired.
Scientists Map the Dark Matter Web Surrounding the Milky Way

Scientists Map the Dark Matter Web Surrounding the Milky Way
A new simulation aims to determine whether the standard view of dark matter can explain how unique our galaxy’s neighborhood is.
Science_159427main_image_feature_666_ys_full-(1).jpg

PHOTOGRAPH: NASA
IN THE 1980S and ’90s, when Carlos Frenk worked on some of the first theories of cold dark matter—“cold” refers to the invisible particles’ relatively slow speed—he thought the idea wouldn’t last very long. He and his colleagues had already tested a theory of faster-moving “hot” dark matter, the possibility that it is made of particles like neutrinos, and quickly ruled it out. Instead, the theory of cold dark matter became astrophysicists’ “standard model” for two decades, a mantle it still carries.

Now Frenk’s trying to poke holes in his cold dark-matter theory again. With a new simulation, he hopes to tackle open questions which may or may not be answered in the theory’s favor. “That's how science works. One of my ambitions today is to shoot down the theory I’ve worked on,” says Frenk, an astrophysicist at Durham University in the United Kingdom.

Frenk and his colleagues at Durham and in Helsinki, Finland, just completed the first part of a computer simulation of the dark-matter universe; it’s dubbed the Simulations Beyond the Local Universe project, or SIBELIUS, after the Finnish composer. The project was led by Stuart McAlpine and Till Sawala, both of whom previously conducted research with Frenk at Durham. Theirs isn’t just any dark-matter simulation, but one with galaxies modeled in it, providing a detailed, three-dimensional picture of what our galaxy and our corner of the universe likely looks like—if the standard view of cold dark matter is right. They published their new research this month.


“This is the first attempt to simulate our patch of the universe, with all the structures we know and love, including the Coma cluster and the Virgo cluster,” Frenk says, referring to large conglomerations of galaxies. Those kinds of cosmic landmarks, which lie tens of millions of light years from Earth or even farther away, might matter for understanding the assembly and evolution of our own galaxy over billions of years. They might also affect physicists’ perspective on how fast the universe is expanding. Frenk and his team hope their simulation will be a useful tool for addressing such weighty questions. And if it can’t answer them, it could mean that current dark-matter theories have problems.

Past efforts by theorists, including by Frenk himself, have either simulated a huge piece of the universe that only resembles the real one in a statistical sense, getting the number of galaxies and galaxy clusters about right, or they’ve zoomed in and focused only on our own Milky Way. But there’s plenty to learn from our galaxy’s surroundings too. Astronomers have thoroughly mapped out our local region, spotting dozens of small and faint “satellite” galaxies, like the Large Magellanic Cloud, which orbit the Milky Way similar to the way the moon orbits the Earth. For decades, if not longer, they’ve also charted galaxy clusters and other objects beyond the neighborhood. (The French astronomer Charles Messier first discovered the Virgo cluster in 1781, in the constellation of the same name.)



SIBELIUS is more complex, because it builds on these impressive observations of our cosmic neighborhood and it actually tries to reproduce, to some extent, that local geography. The SIBELIUS simulation box is a big one, meant to resemble a 3D space that’s 3.3 billion light-years on a side. By design, in this virtual cosmos, we’re the center of the universe—the Milky Way resides in the middle, along with the neighboring Andromeda galaxy.

SIBELIUS is something called a “constrained realization,” meaning that simulations of these and other local galaxies must closely match what’s known about them in the real universe. By mapping them in a broader context, the team wants to see whether this region is representative of the entire universe, or rather atypical. Atypical might mean that there are many more—or fewer—galaxies in the surrounding environs than the expected average.

The%20Local%20Environment.png

At the very center of the simulation (and our own universe) is the Milky Way galaxy and our nearest massive neighbor, the Andromeda galaxy (known as M31).PHOTOGRAPH: DR. STUART MCALPINE

And That's That., I just figured you guys, Some of you anyway really dig Astronomy and physics, So I thought Id pass this along,

Peace out, SP...
 

Kchoo

At Peace.
Thanks for that.

There is the dark matter 'concept' to try to fathom explanations for how the Universe works and then there is the dark matter 'thing'.

I think of the thing, Dark Matter, as smoke.
Lots of useless moke... from the radiation of stars breaking matter down COSMIC particulates. Eventually it gets toasted up and disintegrated. Not much more than that.

The Dark Matter concept is some force that drives the universe- It is hocus pocus, and is not sound science. Just a fun exercise in math. Nothing more.
I think it is worth pursuing this exercise. It could lead to a real discovery, but dark matter, the concept, is nothing more than a box on a Dilbert Cartoon labeled 'And then something magic happens.'

Recently, Science is pointing to Earth's core as something a bit different than what we thought before. So, maybe we will eventually have enough data to map that too.
But, we still won't know exactly what is in the core... just best guess. Not exactly anything that will propel a spacecraft to Proxima Centari, but its great to think about it all. Glad to hear they are trying...
 
Last edited:

1963

Noble
So, Dark Matter is a little tricky to introduce as a Conversation piece so, Bear with me and allow me to try.

Dark matter is composed of particles that do not absorb, reflect, or emit light, so it can't be detected using traditional radio telescopes, You can't see it with the naked eye but we know it exists because of its effects on objects that we can see. It's Believed That Dark Matter Takes up about 85 percent of the total mass in the universe this includes energy. <-- Honestly That's the best I can do here, without dedicating Chapters to just explaining what it is, With the final chapter being the testification that We don't really know what it is...

With that out of the way, We are apparently Mapping Dark matter and have been for a while.
800wm

So, There was an interesting article about this in the news this morning, Apparently, we now have a more complete map than ever before, and it's a really huge deal.

yuegp.jpg

So, Here is an article about the issue Sourced to Wired.
Scientists Map the Dark Matter Web Surrounding the Milky Way

Scientists Map the Dark Matter Web Surrounding the Milky Way
A new simulation aims to determine whether the standard view of dark matter can explain how unique our galaxy’s neighborhood is.
Science_159427main_image_feature_666_ys_full-(1).jpg

PHOTOGRAPH: NASA
IN THE 1980S and ’90s, when Carlos Frenk worked on some of the first theories of cold dark matter—“cold” refers to the invisible particles’ relatively slow speed—he thought the idea wouldn’t last very long. He and his colleagues had already tested a theory of faster-moving “hot” dark matter, the possibility that it is made of particles like neutrinos, and quickly ruled it out. Instead, the theory of cold dark matter became astrophysicists’ “standard model” for two decades, a mantle it still carries.

Now Frenk’s trying to poke holes in his cold dark-matter theory again. With a new simulation, he hopes to tackle open questions which may or may not be answered in the theory’s favor. “That's how science works. One of my ambitions today is to shoot down the theory I’ve worked on,” says Frenk, an astrophysicist at Durham University in the United Kingdom.

Frenk and his colleagues at Durham and in Helsinki, Finland, just completed the first part of a computer simulation of the dark-matter universe; it’s dubbed the Simulations Beyond the Local Universe project, or SIBELIUS, after the Finnish composer. The project was led by Stuart McAlpine and Till Sawala, both of whom previously conducted research with Frenk at Durham. Theirs isn’t just any dark-matter simulation, but one with galaxies modeled in it, providing a detailed, three-dimensional picture of what our galaxy and our corner of the universe likely looks like—if the standard view of cold dark matter is right. They published their new research this month.


“This is the first attempt to simulate our patch of the universe, with all the structures we know and love, including the Coma cluster and the Virgo cluster,” Frenk says, referring to large conglomerations of galaxies. Those kinds of cosmic landmarks, which lie tens of millions of light years from Earth or even farther away, might matter for understanding the assembly and evolution of our own galaxy over billions of years. They might also affect physicists’ perspective on how fast the universe is expanding. Frenk and his team hope their simulation will be a useful tool for addressing such weighty questions. And if it can’t answer them, it could mean that current dark-matter theories have problems.

Past efforts by theorists, including by Frenk himself, have either simulated a huge piece of the universe that only resembles the real one in a statistical sense, getting the number of galaxies and galaxy clusters about right, or they’ve zoomed in and focused only on our own Milky Way. But there’s plenty to learn from our galaxy’s surroundings too. Astronomers have thoroughly mapped out our local region, spotting dozens of small and faint “satellite” galaxies, like the Large Magellanic Cloud, which orbit the Milky Way similar to the way the moon orbits the Earth. For decades, if not longer, they’ve also charted galaxy clusters and other objects beyond the neighborhood. (The French astronomer Charles Messier first discovered the Virgo cluster in 1781, in the constellation of the same name.)



SIBELIUS is more complex, because it builds on these impressive observations of our cosmic neighborhood and it actually tries to reproduce, to some extent, that local geography. The SIBELIUS simulation box is a big one, meant to resemble a 3D space that’s 3.3 billion light-years on a side. By design, in this virtual cosmos, we’re the center of the universe—the Milky Way resides in the middle, along with the neighboring Andromeda galaxy.

SIBELIUS is something called a “constrained realization,” meaning that simulations of these and other local galaxies must closely match what’s known about them in the real universe. By mapping them in a broader context, the team wants to see whether this region is representative of the entire universe, or rather atypical. Atypical might mean that there are many more—or fewer—galaxies in the surrounding environs than the expected average.

The%20Local%20Environment.png

At the very center of the simulation (and our own universe) is the Milky Way galaxy and our nearest massive neighbor, the Andromeda galaxy (known as M31).PHOTOGRAPH: DR. STUART MCALPINE

And That's That., I just figured you guys, Some of you anyway really dig Astronomy and physics, So I thought Id pass this along,

Peace out, SP...

Hi SP, hope you are well my friend! :Thumbsup:.... not really my field of interest, but Do you think it's possible that 'Dark Matter' has proven so frustratingly hard to find for all of these many decades now, is because it doesn't exist at all? ... well I believe that Donald E Scott makes a very convincing argument that this is precisely the reason that something so vast is able to conceal itself from all of the great minds of astrophysics that have claimed trillions in grant money over those long fruitless decades.... :Unsure:


Dark Matter debunked - Nexus

Cheers.
 
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