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22 March 2010
Astronomers Find Black Holes Do Not Absorb Dark Matter
There's the common notion that black holes suck in everything in the nearby vicinity by exerting a strong gravitational influence on the matter, energy, and space surrounding them. But astronomers have found that the dark matter around black holes might be a different story. Somehow dark matter resists 'assimilation' into a black hole. (...)Read [...]
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18 March 2010
This is Getting Boring: General Relativity Passes Yet another Big Test!
Published in 1915, Einstein's theory of general relativity (GR) passed its first big test just a few years later, when the predicted gravitational deflection of light passing near the Sun was observed during the 1919 solar eclipse. In 1960, GR passed its first big test in a lab, here on Earth; the Pound-Rebka experiment. And over [...]
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01 March 2010
What Can The (Dark) Matter Be?
What better place to look for dark matter than down a mine shaft? A research team from the University of Florida have spent nine years monitoring for any signs of the elusive stuff using germanium and silicon detectors cooled down to a fraction of a degree above absolute zero. And the result? A couple of [...]
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21 February 2010
Dark Matter in Distant Galaxy Groups Mapped for the First Time
Galaxy density in the Cosmic Evolution Survey (COSMOS) field, with colors representing the redshift of the galaxies, ranging from redshift of 0.2 (blue) to 1 (red). Pink x-ray contours show the extended x-ray emission as observed by XMM-Newton. Dark matter (actually cold, dark – non-baryonic – matter) can be detected only by its gravitational influence. In [...]
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20 February 2010
ESA's Tough Choice: Dark Matter, Sun Close Flyby, Exoplanets (Pick Two)
Key questions relevant to fundamental physics and cosmology, namely the nature of the mysterious dark energy and dark matter (Euclid); the frequency of exoplanets around other stars, including Earth-analogs (PLATO); take the closest look at our Sun yet possible, approaching to just 62 solar radii (Solar Orbiter) … but only two! What would be your [...]
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16 February 2010
Dark Matter Detector Heading to the ISS This Summer
The long-awaited experiment that will search for dark matter is getting closer to heading to the International Space Station. The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS) is undergoing final testing at ESA’s Test Centre in the Netherlands before being launched on the space shuttle to the ISS, currently scheduled for July, 2010. The AMS will [...]
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08 February 2010
Universe to WMAP: ΛCDM Rules, OK?
The Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) science team has finished analyzing seven full years' of data from the little probe that could, and once again it seems we can sum up the universe in six parameters and a model. Using the seven-year WMAP data, together with recent results on the large-scale distribution of galaxies, and an [...]
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06 January 2010
Milky Way Has a "Squashed Beachball"-Shaped Dark Matter Halo
This illustration shows the visible Milky Way galaxy surrounded by a "squashed beachball"-shaped dark matter halo. Click the image for a movie showing a 3D flyaround view. Source: UCLA Our galaxy is shaped like a flat spiral right? Not if you're talking about dark matter. Astronomers announced today that the Milky Way's dark matter halo, which [...]
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17 December 2009
New Results from the CDMS II Experiment
It's no secret that astronomers claim that most of our universe is made of dark matter that cannot be readily detected. From Fritz Zwicky's observations of the Coma clusters in the 1920's which suggested that additional mass would be necessary to hold the cluster together, to the flat rotation curves of galaxies, to lensing in [...]
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26 April 2009
Did Dark Matter Annihilate Our Early Universe?
380,000 years after the Big Bang, the Universe cooled from being a hot soup of plasma, to a temperature where protons and electrons could combine to form atoms. This calm period of neutral hydrogen in universal history didn’t last for long however. The neutral hydrogen atoms were ripped apart once more, by a mechanism that [...]
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22 April 2009
Dark Matter, Dark Energy; Now There’s “Dark Gulping”
For all you dark matter and dark energy fans out there, now there’s another new “dark” to add to the list. It’s called “dark gulping,” and it involves a process which may explain how supermassive black holes were able to form in the early universe. Astronomers from the University College of London (UCL) [...]
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01 April 2009
Astrophysics Satellite Detects Dark Matter Clue?
An international collaboration of astronomers is reporting an unusual spike of atmospheric particles that could be a long-sought signature of dark matter. The orbiting PAMELA satellite, an astrophysics mission operated by Italy, Russia, Germany and Sweden, has detected a  glut of positrons — antimatter counterparts to electrons — in the energy range theorized to be associated with [...]
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12 February 2009
Ultra Compact Dwarf Galaxies once crowded with stars
Astronomers think they've found a way to explain why Ultra Compact Dwarf Galaxies, oddball creations from the early universe, contain so much more mass than their luminosity would explain. Pavel Kroupa, an astronomer at the University of Bonn in Germany, led a research team that's proposing the unexplained density may actually be a relic of stars that were [...]
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07 February 2009
Next-Generation Telescope Gets Team
  Astronomy organizations in the United States, Australia and Korea have signed on to build the largest ground-based telescope in the world – unless another team gets there first. The Giant Magellan Telescope, or GMT, will have the resolving power of a single 24.5-meter (80-foot) primary mirror, which will make it three times more powerful than any of the Earth's [...]
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20 January 2009
Space Telescope of the Future: SIM
Two of the hottest and most engaging topics in space and astronomy these days are 1.) exoplanets – planets orbiting other stars – and 2.) dark matter—that unknown stuff that seemingly makes up a considerable portion of our universe. There's a spacecraft currently in development that could help answer our questions about whether [...]
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