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Quantum fluctuations in space, science, exploration and other cosmic fields... served up regularly by MSNBC.com science editor Alan Boyle since 2002.

Alan Boyle covers the physical sciences, anthropology, technological innovation and space science and exploration for MSNBC.com. He is a winner of the AAAS Science Journalism Award, the NASW Science-in-Society Award and other honors; a contributor to "A Field Guide for Science Writers"; and a member of the board of the Council for the Advancement of Science Writing.

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See a dark-matter magnet

Posted: Tuesday, February 05, 2008 3:10 PM by Alan Boyle


NASA / ESA / ESO / CXC / Penn State
This Hubble-Chandra image highlights the X-ray halo surrounding the elliptical galaxy NGC 1132. Click
on the image for a larger version.

The Hubble Space Telescope has added a new view of the giant elliptical galaxy NGC 1132, filling out our picture of a huge depository of dark matter that may have coalesced from smaller galaxies – or somehow formed in isolation as a "lone wolf" in the cosmos.

Elliptical galaxies tend to look like unremarkable fuzzballs, but there's something special about this one: It has an impressive halo of X-ray-emitting gas - which shows up in shades of blue and purple in this image, a composite of Hubble's visible-light view and a false-color view from the Chandra X-Ray Observatory.

Based on how the X-ray halo is gravitationally bound to the galaxy, astronomers figure that there's enough dark matter within NGC 1132 for a whole cluster of galaxies.

Dark matter is a mysterious invisible substance that can be detected only by its gravitational effect. It may be made up of exotic subatomic particles or unseen objects. Whatever it is, dark matter appears to make up as much as 90 percent of the matter in the universe. That's a mystery exceeded in magnitude only by dark energy, an unknown factor that scientists say accounts for almost three times as much of the universe's combined matter-energy content. (Of course, they could be wrong.)

All that dark matter makes astronomers think that NGC 1132 grew up through the mergers of many smaller galaxies in an entire group, drawn in by the dark matter. That's why the galaxy is sometimes called a "fossil group." However, they can't rule out a scenario in which NGC 1132 was born as a full-fledged giant - perhaps under conditions that somehow suppressed the formation of lesser galaxies.

NGC 1132 is in the southern constellation Eridanus, 318 million light-years from Earth. The Hubble imagery was collected in 2005 and 2006 using the telescope's Advanced Camera for Surveys. Even though NGC 1132 itself is featureless, a high-resolution view offers gobs of galaxies to feast your eyes on. (Here's an even higher-resolution version.)

Check out the Space Telescope Science Institute's Hubblesite and the European Space Agency's Hubble Information Center to learn more about the dark-matter magnet - and click through our space gallery for additional highlights from Hubble.

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Comments

CORRECTION
 My reply to The Village Geek and Others has a transmission ERROR. The GM/(Rc) should be GM/(Rc²). In case the square (2) does not appear on the "c" again let me say it in words, as long as the product of G (Newton's gravitational constant) and M (the largest mass involved) divided by the product of R (the distance to mass M) and the SQUARE of c is sufficiently small compared to 1 (like in 1,2,3,4,...), then Einstein's gravitation shows that Newton's gravitation is adequate.
 The "rhar" should be "that", sorry.
  An additional and new comment: Wouldn't our physical universe at least appear "MALICIOUS" if variations in G, c, e, h, etc. were important in order to appreciate and understand our physical universe, but they could never be uncovered by us because our Sun (and us, of course) will not last long enough (not enough billions or trillions of years) for us to observe such variations (lack of constancy)? Maybe there is other life, like us, in our universe to allow its beauty and understanding to be discovered by them in case we mess up on the way (nulcear or religious wars? forbid scientific probing?), long before our Sun dies.
 Guess that I should also point out that there are impossible consequences (maliciousness) in positing that a variation of G over long periods of time could be the cause of the recent data showing an acceleration in the expansion rate. Evidence for variations in G over time has been sought experimentally and has not been found. Of course, All know that gravity waves have not been observed even though Einstein's gravitation predicts them; however, the vastness of its successful predictions, many now experimentally verified, is the source of the scientific confidence and properly inhibits a change from Einstein that does not show how such a change includes Einstein's stuff as a special case and the precise formula for reduction to Einstein's stuff, like Einstein's stuff included Newton's stuff as a special case as long as GM/(Rc²) is kept sufficiently small (small enough for accuracy requirements needed) compared to 1. Again, hope the square indicating 2 appears on the c. :-)
 If some now feel that a universe with free will shows maliciousness (hence, no problem keeping the variations in, say, G, c, e, h, etc. hidden from us for relatively short time intervals, just a little more maliciousness) because we see so many bad things happening in our universe, they need to decide whether they would prefer to be robots. It is interesting to notice that governments that tend to robotize their citizens end up failing in our universe with its characteristic free will while those encouraging free will (including freedom of expression) do much better.
Chris Reeve...your long winded talk sure sounds good but it's just a lot of well crafted sentences with no plausibility. Maybe you should start listening to the real scientists instead of being fixated on this electric universe bru ha ha.

If you want to take on and turn around all of known physics, good luck!
im sorry that i dont completely understand your research and data. i do have a small question though. i know its 'logically' impossible but what would happen if you could secure dark matter, bring it to Earth, and speed it up using particle accelerator?
please read this excellent article from Dr. Michael Oard & Dr. Jonathan Sarfati from Answers in Genesis

http://www.answersingenesis.org/tj/v13/i1/milky_way.asp
Energy exists. More than we'll ever know............
Can the appearance of the universe be explained by the variability of "c"?  If an iota of Energy appeared when the constant was close to 0, Mass would have exploded out of a singularity.  E/c^2 = M. Then the relationship had to flip to E = mc^2 when "c" became significant. However, the initial iota of energy and the existence of "c" itself must be balanced by antimatter and a negative "c".  I just believe that the sum of everything = 0.
Let's face it, Dark Matter is either evidence that science has become too lazy to learn anything new or it's the hand of God.

Science uses the collective term Dark Matter to sum up all of the effects measured but not explained by current theories. Calling it Dark Matter is just a convenient way to sum it all up rather than learn all of the pulls/effects we have no clue about.

If I as a Christian call it the hand of God, the only disproof Science can offer is their "faith" that there is no God. Scientists "believe" they will "create" a new theory to cover the holes in their current theories. I find it interesting and amusing that Science needs to rely so heavily on faith.
Dark matter.  No one can see it, it has mysterious properties unlike any matter we have ever observed, yet it is the most pervasive form of matter in the universe.  Does anyone see any similarity between this and the mysterious ether that was supposed to fill the universe at the beginning of the 20th century?  This is an attempt to explain away certain unpleasant characteristics of our universe that reveal our ingorance of its true nature.  I wonder how much of this would be explained if it were postulated that the universe is neither concave or convex, neither collapsing or expanding but a spiral universe perfectly balanced?  The chances against this would be astronomical (no pun intended) to the extent that would make biological evolution appear commonplace by comparison.  
In all these articles about dark energy, dark matter, gravity. It has always been expressed if not simply implied that electromagnetism is a short range force not extending much more than X^2 the distance of the source. What if we are wrong and just like light and gravity magnetic attraction & repulsions are infinite? What if the net effect of electrons pushing from the center of our galaxy are pushing us away from that center? Wouldn't that explain expansion? Also it's true individual electrons can't travel faster than light, but what of the emf force can't it travel FTL? My point being if EMF (force only) traveled Faster Than Light, wouldn't it also explain hyper inflation?
Well, I am still confused.  Back when nobody was sure that black holes really existed, we needed "dark matter" to exolain the apparent mass of the galaxy.  Now that it has been confirmed that there is a supper massive black hole at the center of out galaxy, shouldn't that be the explanation for the unseeable mass?
Just asking............
TG
Couldn't the concept of dark energy causing the repulsion of the universe be more easily explained by centrifical force? If the universe were spinning, we wouldn't know it without a frame of reference, yet it may account for expansion.
Rod, that's a good thought, but there would have to be an axis.  What I mean is that objects in the plane of rotation would be "expanding" away, but objects up and down along the axis would not be.
Tom
Thanks Thomas, That's been buggin me for awhile, so I'm glad you cleared it up. I forgot the expansion is occurring equally in 3 dimensions as a sphere.
Isn't dark matter created in a computer simulation via the presences of a zero in an array cell? Whereby matter and energy are just an array cell occupied by something.

Other galaxies appear to operate and interact with each other like a poorly run simulated light show. It's pretty to look at, but it doesn't obey anything we understand.

Isn't that just what God in the Bible (Jesus) says it is? Just stuff to look at.

Is Everquest a real place? I can see it. It seems to have objects that I can interact with. They may sometimes obey the laws of gravity and time and space. I can get angry watching it or happy watching it. But is it real? Can I prove it's not real?

If you were inside a 3-d hologram interacting with other spirits and the world obey what seemed to be how you experience this world, would it be real or not? Could you prove it was real or not?
I suppose if you asked the scientists where exactly this Dark stuff exists would be similar to the blind motorist who never left his car in his life driving through the unknown forest asked: Why are you on the road? My motorsit would say: The road goes this way because it passes through where there are no trees to allow me to safely get to where I am headed. I would ask the blind motorist: What is a tree and get the response trees are the things not in the path of the road. I would ask the motorist: Have you ever seen a tree? He'd say no, someone told me about them. I'd say: How do you know the trees are there? He'd respond I believe they are there because someone told me they are there.

I would then say: So it's only by faith that you stay on the road because you believe in something you've never seen only because it makes your world safe.

It sounds to me like scientists are proving they have faith in a higher power because only by their faith can their entire existence be justified.
SEARCH BEYOND DARK MATTER CONCEPTS. If you are serious about soving the Mysterious Nature of the Universe, the concepts must be clear.Say Plasma occupies the shape the Body. So also in the Milkyway Galactic Plane-one must search for Drive function.
Cosmology Definition identifies the Heart of Univere at 10^5 Light years beyond Milky way.At some Point,The Dynamic function and Glow modes become clear.See Cosmoloy Vedas Interlink Books for projections.


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