http://www.universetoday.com/119297/how-do-we-know-dark-matter-exists/#more-119297 Dark matter can’t be seen or detected by any of our instruments, so how do we know it really exists? Imagine the Universe was a pie, and you were going to slice it up into tasty portions corresponding to what proportions are what. The largest portion of the pie, 68% would go to dark energy, that mysterious force accelerating the expansion of the Universe. 27% would go to dark matter, the mysterious matter that surrounds galaxies and only interacts through gravity. A mere 5% of this pie would go to regular normal matter, the stuff that stars, planets, gas, dust, and humans are made out of. Dark matter has been given this name because it doesn’t seem to interact with regular matter in any way. It doesn’t collide with it, or absorb energy from it. We can’t see it or detect it with any of our instruments. We only know it’s there because we can see the effect of its gravity. Now, you might be saying, if we don’t know what this thing is, and we can’t detect it. How do we know it’s actually there? Isn’t it probably not there, like dragons? How do we know dark matter actually exists, when we have no idea what it actually is? Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Fritz Zwicky. Image Source: Fritz Zwicky Stiftung website Oh, it’s there. In fact, pretty much all we know is that it does exist. Dark matter was first theorized back in the 1930s by Fritz Zwicky to account for the movement of galaxy clusters, but the modern calculations were made by Vera Rubin in the 1960s and 70s. She calculated that galaxies were spinning more quickly than they should. So quickly that they should tear themselves apart like a merry-go-round ejecting children. Rubin imagined that every galaxy was stuck inside a vast halo of dark matter that supplied the gravity to hold the galaxy together. But there was no way to actually detect this stuff, so astronomers proposed other models. Maybe gravity doesn’t work the way we think it does at vast distances. But in the last few years, astronomers have gotten better and better at detecting dark matter, purely though the effect of its gravity on the path that light takes as it crosses the Universe. As light travels through a region of dark matter, its path gets distorted by gravity. Instead of taking a straight line, the light is bent back and forth depending on how much dark matter is passes through. And here’s the amazing part. Astronomers can then map out regions of dark matter in the sky just by looking at the distortions in the light, and then working backwards to figure out how much intervening dark matter would need to be there to cause it. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Large Hadron Collider. Credit: NY Times These techniques have become so sophisticated that astronomers have discovered unusual situations where galaxies and their dark matter have gotten stripped away from each other. Or dark matter galaxies which don’t have enough gas to form stars. They’re just giant blobs of dark matter. Astronomers even use dark matter as gravitational lenses to study more distant objects. They have no idea what dark matter is, but they can still use it as a telescope. They’ve never captured a dark matter particle, and haven’t studied them in the lab. One of the Large Hadron Collider’s next tasks will be to try and generate particles that match the characteristics of dark matter as we understand it. Even if the LHC doesn’t actually create dark matter, it will help narrow down the current theories, hopefully helping physicists focus in on the true nature of this mystery. This is how science works. Someone notices something unusual, and then people propose theories to explain it. The theory that best matches reality is considered correct. We live in a modern world, where so many scientific theories have already been proven for hundreds of years: germs, gravity, evolution, etc. But with dark matter, you’re alive at a time when this is a mystery. And if we’re lucky, we’ll see it solved within our lifetime. Or maybe there’s no dark matter after all, and we’re about to learn something totally new about our Universe. Science, it’s all up to you.
A potted history The Dark Matter Rap: Cosmological History for the MTV Generation by David Weinberg My name is Fritz Zwicky, I can be kind of prickly, This song had better start by giving me priority. Whatever anybody says, I said in 1933. Observe the Coma cluster, the redshifts of the galaxies imply some big velocities. They're moving so fast, there must be missing mass! Dark matter. Dark matter: Do we need it? What is it? Where is it? How much? Do we need it? Do we need it? Do we need it? Do we need it? For nearly forty years, the dark matter problems sits. Nobody gets worried 'cause, "It's only crazy Fritz." The next step's not 'til the early 1970s, Ostriker and Peebles, dynamics of the galaxies, cold disk instabilities. They say: "If the mass, were sitting in the stars, all those pretty spirals, ought to be bars! Self-gravitating disks? Uh-uh, oh no. What those spirals need is a massive halo. And hey, look over here, check out these observations, Vera Rubin's optical curves of rotation, they can provide our needed confirmation: Those curves aren't falling, they're FLAT! Dark matter's where it's AT! Dark matter: Do we need it? What is it? Where is it? How much? What is it? What is it? What is it? What is it? And so the call goes out for the dark matter candidates: black holes, snowballs, gas clouds, low mass stars, or planets. But we quickly hit a snag because galaxy formation requires too much structure in the background radiation if there's only baryons and adiabatic fluctuations. The Russians have an answer: "We can solve the impasse. Lyubimov has shown that the neutrino has mass." Zel'dovich cries, "Pancakes! The dark matter's HOT." Carlos Frenk, Simon White, Marc Davis say, "NOT! Quasars are old, and the pancakes must be young. Forming from the top down it can't be done." So neutrinos hit the skids, and the picture's looking black. But California laid-back, Blumenthal & Primack say, "Don't have a heart attack. There's lots of other particles. Just read the physics articles. Take this pretty theory that's called supersymmetry. What better for dark matter than the L-S-P? The mass comes in at a ~ keV, and that's not hot, that's warm." Jim Peebles says, "Warm? Don't be half-hearted. Let's continue the trend that we have started. I'll stake out a position that's bold: dark matter's not hot, not warm, but COLD." Well cold dark matter causes overnight sensations: hand-waving calculations, computer simulations, detailed computations of the background fluctuations. Results are good, and the prospects look bright. Here's a theory that works! Well, maybe not quite. Dark matter: Do we need it? What is it? Where is it? How much? Where is it? How much? Where is it? How much? We have another puzzle that goes back to Robert Dicke. Finding a solution has proven kind of tricky. The CMB's so smooth, it's as if there'd been a compact between parts of the universe that aren't in causal contact. Alan Guth says, "Inflation, will be our salvation, give smoothness of the universe a causal explanation, and even make the galaxies from quantum fluctuations! There is one prediction, from which it's hard to run. If inflation is correct, then Omega should be one." Observers say, "Stop, no, sorry, won't do. Look at these clusters, Omega's point 2." The theorists respond, "We have an explanation. The secret lies in biased galaxy formation. We're not short of critical mass density. Just some regions, are missing luminosity." Observers roll their eyes, and they start to get annoyed, But the theorists reply, "There's dark matter in the voids." Dark matter: Do we need it? What is it? Where is it? How much? Do we need it? Do we need it? Do we need it? Do we need it? Along comes Moti Milgrom, who's here to tell us all: "This dark matter claptrap has got you on the wrong track. You're all too mired in conventionality, wedded to your standard theory of gravity, seduced by the elegance of General Relativity. Just change your force law, that's the key. Give me one free parameter, and I'll explain it all." "Not so," claim Lake, and Spergel, et al., "On dwarf galaxies, your theory does fall." The argument degenerates; it's soon a barroom brawl. Dark matter: Do we need it? What is it? Where is it? How much? What is it? What is it? What is it? What is it? New observations hit the theory like an ice cold shower. They show that cold dark matter has too little large scale power. Says Peebles: "Cold dark matter? My feeblest innovation. An overly aesthetic, theoretical abberation. Our theories must have firmer empirical foundation. Shed all this extra baggage, including the carry-ons. Use particles we know, i.e., the baryons. Others aren't convinced, and a few propose a mixture of matter hot and cold, perhaps with strings or texture. But nowadays most physicists are captured by the synergy of inflation, cold dark matter, and repulsive dark energy. Lambda or quintessence makes the whole picture integrate by causing the expansion of the universe to accelerate. New physics is exciting, and it gives us more to do. Before we had one mystery. Now we have two. So now you've heard my lecture, and it's time to end the session with the standard closing line: Thank you, any questions?
Great sentiments, nice lyrics, but rap is total crap...rap crap. No questions. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
The Dark Matter Poltergeist Article written by Dr. Katie Mack - Astrophysicist. She studies Dark Matter and her explanation is quite simple, yet effective in terms of definition.
Weinberg's is a great 'rap up' of dark matter observations, and why it's important. I've never seen better.
This is the most recent on mirror dark matter and the experiments that claim to have detected it. The prediction for the mirror dark matter is to have a very weak electromagnetic interaction with the matter we can see. It's a text on the theory in my estimation. Note both experiments conclude they have evidence for successful detection. http://arxiv.org/abs/1401.3965
