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I just felt like saying something about dark matter.
Particles passing through, I guess they think that as the Earth rotates, a person is alternately upwind or downwind from it's flow. It is in motion apparently, but scarcly interacts with matter. The big question for me is could there ever be a machine build that could somehow generate a "Field?" that could interact with dark matter? Then perhaps a huge energy source, since the dark matter is in motion.
If they really are getting close to understanding the Higgs Boson, then perhaps some star treky type things might eventually occur.
I guess my point is that if dark matter is moving through use here, it is likely moving through Pluto as well. Maybe we will never tap it as an energy source, but I have a feeling that if there were a way, then it would certaintly help to open up a path to the stars.
But of course I have nothing to offer as how to do that.
We don't really have a understanding of Mass and Gravitation yet, at least not one I have been told and can understand.
Is it possible that the root of political science claims is to produce white collar jobs for people who paid for an education and do not want a real job?
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Well, certainly I should think that if we could find a way of interacting with neutrinos (by manipulating the weak interaction?), we could create some kind of sail based on that, but it would have to be a mighty big sail at current fluxes, I suspect, and probably too heavy to be practical. Unless of course we could channel then into a tight beam between stars, but then you have to ask what advantage that gives you over conventional beam-riding, either particle or light based. Much higher velocity, perhaps, since neutrinos are travelling at nearly the speed of light? No risk of damaging the rest of the craft - you could step right into the path of the neutrinos and be unaffected?
There's an interesting paper in the last issue of JBIS (Journal of the British Interplanetary Society) concerning the use of focussed gravitational waves being uses to shorten the space between two objects - think warp drive but with the generation equipment outside the spacecraft. You could possibly lay warp lanes between stars with it, but they'd have to be lain subluminally. Or maybe not quite... The generation equipment had to be halfway between the objects, so you could possibly lay a trail of then using the previous one to boost the next to it's position.
Use what is abundant and build to last
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This topic of Void's, with participation by Terraformer, is the only topic in the archive with "darK" and "matter" in the title. While the topic is created with an interesting question, I am hoping it can adapt to introduction of a new report on dark matter research.
I note that no conclusions can be drawn from this research. Dark Matter and WIMP's appear to be about 50/50 matched in the debate.
Link to article goes here: https://www.cnn.com/2025/10/20/science/ … ark-matter
Scientists think the mysterious glow in our galaxy could be from dark matter. What that means
By
5/23/18 CNN London Jacopo Prisco
Jacopo Prisco
Updated 21 hr agoThe Milky Way, seen here in the Uruguayan sky, has a mysterious glow at its center, which could be related to a hidden form of matter that physicists call dark matter.
The Milky Way, seen here in the Uruguayan sky, has a mysterious glow at its center, which could be related to a hidden form of matter that physicists call dark matter. Mariana Suarez/AFP/Getty Images
At the center of our galaxy, there’s a mysterious, diffuse glow given off by gamma rays — powerful radiation usually emitted by high-energy objects such as rapidly rotating or exploding stars.
NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope detected the glow shortly after launching in 2008, and the light has puzzled scientists ever since, prompting speculation on its cause.
Some astronomers believe the source of the glow to be pulsars — the spinning leftovers of exploded stars — while others point to colliding particles of dark matter, an elusive and invisible form of matter that is believed to be five times more abundant than regular matter.
Many studies have previously found support for both ideas, but there seemed to be a problem with the dark matter theory: The gamma ray glow appeared to match the shape of the galactic bulge — a crowded, bulbous region at the center of the Milky Way that’s mostly made up of old stars, including pulsars. This observation seemed to support the pulsar theory, with experts theorizing that the glow would have taken a more spherical form if its source were dark matter. However, astronomers haven’t been able to observe enough of the pulsars that would be producing the gamma rays to make a conclusive assessment.
Now, new simulations made using supercomputers show for the first time that dark matter collisions could also have created the bulge-shaped glow, adding weight to the dark matter theory.
“We’re in the situation where we have two theories, one posturing dark matter and claiming that it could explain the data we see, another one old stars,” said Joseph Silk, a professor of physics and astronomy at the Johns Hopkins University and coauthor of a study detailing the new findings, published Thursday in the journal Physical Review Letters.
“There’s a 50% chance that it might be dark matter at this point, as opposed to the slightly more mundane explanation of old stars, in my opinion.”
The gamma ray glow can be clearly seen in this image, from NASA's Fermi telescope data, along the map's center, which marks the central plane of our Milky Way galaxy.
The gamma ray glow can be clearly seen in this image, from NASA's Fermi telescope data, along the map's center, which marks the central plane of our Milky Way galaxy. NASA/DOE/Fermi LAT Collaboration
Evidence of dark matter would make for a groundbreaking discovery. Swiss astronomer Fritz Zwicky first theorized dark matter’s existence in the 1930s, and American astronomers Vera Rubin and W. Kent Ford confirmed it in the 1970s. They noticed that stars orbiting at the edge of spiral galaxies were moving too quickly to be held together by visible matter and gravity alone, and postulated that there was a large, unseen quantity of matter preventing them from flying apart. Despite decades of effort, scientists have never observed the mysterious substance directly, hence its name.
Vera Rubin discovered in the 1970's that most of the universe consists of 'dark matter.
Vera Rubin discovered in the 1970's that most of the universe consists of 'dark matter. The Washington Times/Shutterstock
“There’s no question that the nature of dark matter is one of the outstanding major problems in physics,” Silk said. “It’s something that’s everywhere — near us, far from us, and we just don’t know what it is.”Hunting for WIMPs
There are many hypotheses on what dark matter could be, including remnants of primordial black holes or an undiscovered type of particle. Much of the effort to find dark matter has centered on the latter idea, leading to the construction of detectors such as the LZ Dark Matter Experiment in South Dakota.
The instrument is designed to spot one of the leading dark matter candidates, hypothetical particles called WIMPs — Weakly Interacting Massive Particles — which don’t absorb light and can pass through regular matter almost seamlessly. Scientists believe that when two WIMPs meet, they annihilate each other and produce gamma rays, which would make them a plausible source of the glow.
Related article
This composite image shows the galaxy cluster 1E 0657-56, also known as the "bullet cluster." This cluster was formed after the collision of two large clusters of galaxies, the most energetic event known in the universe since the Big Bang. Hot gas detected by Chandra in X-rays is seen as two pink clumps in the image and contains most of the "normal," or baryonic, matter in the two clusters. The bullet-shaped clump on the right is the hot gas from one cluster, which passed through the hot gas from the other larger cluster during the collision. An optical image from Magellan and the Hubble Space Telescope shows the galaxies in orange and white. The blue areas in this image show where astronomers find most of the mass in the clusters. The concentration of mass is determined using the effect of so-called gravitational lensing, where light from the distant objects is distorted by intervening matter. Most of the matter in the clusters (blue) is clearly separate from the normal matter (pink), giving direct evidence that nearly all of the matter in the clusters is dark.Scientists may have found an answer to the mystery of dark matter. It involves an unexpected byproduct
Silk’s study used supercomputers to create a map of where dark matter should be in the Milky Way, taking into account how the galaxy originally formed.
“The problem was that all of the models over the past 20 years of the dark matter in our galaxy assume it’s basically like a spherical ball. There is no shape to it, because that was the simplest model,” Silk said.
“Our contribution was, for the first time, to make a real computer simulation of the dark matter distribution. And lo and behold, we found the central part of the dark matter, where the gamma rays would be being emitted, to be, in fact, squashed — more like egg-shaped.” This squashed shape is a close match to the Fermi telescope data, Silk explained.
NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, shown here, scans the entire sky every three hours as it orbits Earth.
NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, shown here, scans the entire sky every three hours as it orbits Earth. NASA Goddard Space Flight Center/Chris Smith (USRA/GESTAR)
Luckily, confirmation of the link between dark matter and the glow may not be too far in the offing. A new instrument, the Cherenkov Telescope Array Observatory, or CTAO, is under construction at two sites — one in Chile and another in Spain — and will start to return data as soon as 2027. CTAO will detect gamma rays at a much higher resolution than Fermi, Silk said, making it possible to tell if the gamma rays at the center of the Milky Way are the product of dark matter collisions.
That finding would be a breakthrough in the search for the elusive substance, he added, as well as offer proof that at least some dark matter is made of WIMPs. If, on the contrary, CTAO doesn’t link the glow to dark matter, scientists would be back to square one in the search, with all options still on the table.
A fundamental secret
The study helps reopen the possibility that dark matter could explain the glow at our galactic center, although it doesn’t give new positive evidence in favor of dark matter, said Tracy Slatyer, a professor of physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who was not involved with the study. However, she is not convinced that there is a definitive match between the shape of the dark matter distribution and the stellar bulge. “I thought the dark matter hypothesis was still reasonable even before this study,” she added.
This work is further support for the international effort to keep pushing in the hunt for WIMPs, according to Chamkaur Ghag, a professor of physics and astronomy at University College London, who also didn’t participate in Silk’s research. “They remain a most elegant solution to the long-standing dark matter problem,” Ghag added via email, noting that with even more detectors for WIMPs under development, seeing signals of these particles annihilating in space would mean settling the near-century old puzzle of dark matter.
The central detector of the LZ Dark Matter Experiment, located at the Sanford Underground Research Facility in South Dakota, seen here before it was placed underground.
The central detector of the LZ Dark Matter Experiment, located at the Sanford Underground Research Facility in South Dakota, seen here before it was placed underground. Matthew Kapust/Sanford Underground Research Facility/Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Nico Cappelluti, an associate professor in the department of physics at the University of Miami, said that the Fermi telescope has been a game changer for NASA, and this paper shows that dark matter is still very much in the race to explain the strange glow at the center of our galaxy. “That mystery is alive, and it’s the kind that keeps scientists like me awake at night,” said Cappelluti, who didn’t take part in the study.Figuring out what dark matter is has been the scientific quest of our century, he added, noting that “WIMPs, these hypothetical particles, have been our prime suspects for years.” The fact that experiments on Earth haven’t caught them yet is frustrating, he said.
“But Fermi gives us a reason to keep believing. This paper reminds us not to cross WIMPs off the list just yet — they might still be lighting up the center of our galaxy,” Cappelluti said. “And if that’s true, we’re closer than ever to uncovering a fundamental secret of the universe.”
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