Astro-Image of the Day: Glimpsing the Veil that Touches Us All

[mckitterick]

Astronomers are still looking for the elusive dark matter - even though it makes up more than 90% of the universe. So you'd think they'd have a good grasp of baryonic matter, otherwise known as normal matter - including human beings. I guess that's not a surprise, that we don't fully understand human beings, including ourselves. Just ask anyone. But I digress.

So it's a big deal when scientists discovered a gauzy haze of nearly invisible baryonic matter enveloping two clusters of galaxies.


Click the image to see the story.

Aurora Simionescu of the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics said, "So far, we could only see the clusters, the dense knots of the web. Now, we are starting to see the connecting wires of the immense cosmic spider web."

Cool beans.

Best,
Chris

Comments

[piezocuttlefish.livejournal.com]

The HREF for the image link is blank. I want that story! *pulls on your pantleg*

[mckitterick.livejournal.com]

Fixed! Sorry 'bout that, and thanks.

The first step

[bodandra.livejournal.com]

is always admitting that one has 'No Clue'.
Now that's out of the way, we can search more aggressively, right?

Re: The first step

[mckitterick.livejournal.com]

Absolutely! And now that scientists know how to find this matter, they should have better success.

[scottakennedy.livejournal.com]

You're sure that's not just a picture of Tholian space? ;)

[mckitterick.livejournal.com]

That would explain a lot....

[steve98052.livejournal.com]

It would be interesting to find that the dark matter was all baryons that we just hadn't figured out how to see.

[mckitterick.livejournal.com]

...and Occam's Razor would suggest that's more likely.

[steve98052.livejournal.com]

The article says most of the dark matter is not baryons, rather than saying it's baryons we don't know how to see. I wonder whether that's a case of going with the customary assumption, or if there's some theoretical reason that says the dark matter can't be baryons. (Obviously it's not all baryons; we know that some of it is leptons, but that's usually ignored as an understood part of ordinary matter.)