http://www.wired.com/news/space/0,2697,66487,00.html

What do you all think of that?

They just found Baryons, the building blocks of life. Oxygen Ions + Carbon + Nitrogen etc... They have yet to find dark matter. But that's some pretty good info.

Wow, thats amazing. So, what's dark matter?

Dark Matter

n : (cosmology) a hypothetical form of matter that is believed to make up 90 percent of the matter in the universe; it is invisible (does not absorb or emit light) and does not collide with atomic particles but exerts gravitational force

Very interesting if they find dark energy... then that'll be revolutionary, imagine harnessing taht

90%?

why is it so hard to find?

hehe

Maybe because it's invisible.

I still don't understand what's dark energy...

"Whereas baryons account for 4 percent of the total matter and energy in the universe, dark matter is thought to make up 23 percent."

So yeah, they maybe found some dark matter, if that was actually part of the dark matter, but even then, there's undiscovered dark matter?

As for dark energy, I'd say it's a name given for a force we don't understand. It could be that there isn't any dark energy at all, but our theories are wrong. Same with dark matter btw. We haven't observed it for sure yet, we just assume dark matter is going to be there. With other theories, I guess you could find workaround without the necessity of dark matter to exist? It could be that we simply don't understand gravitational forces and therefore assume there must be tons of strange "dark matter" around us when it's in reality us who're wrong.

we find this stuff all around the universe and so on but we still don't know what's at the bottom of the oceans, on our own planet!

I thought the article was quite interesting

In layman's terms: Dark matter, which makes up a huge chunk of the universe (up to 90%), is the theoretical "filler" to make everything else we have discovered about the universe fit. We can measure gravitational effects, and we understand the gravitational effects of the matter that we CAN see but there's a whole lot of gravitational forces from something that we CAN'T see. The best example is the expansion of the universe. It was recently discovered that not only is the universe expanding, but it is accelerating. The amount of matter required to exert the necessary gravitational forces that would cause the universe to accelerate outward is about 10 times what we can see and detect. Thus, dark matter.

ooooooooooo interesting

slimy, we know what's at the bottom of the ocean, water, sediment and fish that can eat us, or at least they look like they can

Anyway, this is cool, it's always good to know about this stuff.

Interesting Article...

then how they know it is there

^^ Because they can predict the mass of what should be there. Or something like that. Its been awhile since ive had astro at PSU.

I've always wondered if anyone took into account simple light and emitted electromagnetic radiation.

You figure, everything in the universe has been 'glowing' since the beginning of time. I imagine a good amount of that energy is lost, 99.9% (completely made up figure) of it never hitting any matter (and recycling the energy).

Sorta like evaporation. If matter and energy are two states, and they can't find most of the matter, its probably because its become energy and escaped quantification.

:shrug:

so how exactly does the universe accelerate? To accelerate you have to have a reference point. What would that be? Another universe...holy **** this is over my head...

Oh, and how do they know its growing? Have they found out whats at the end?

Hmm, my physics teacher said that "Dark matter" was probably neutrinos. So small that they basically go right through the earth without colliding into anything. He said a lot more but it was basically the end of the semester so I was tuning in and out.

Pretty cool, was a big subject when I did physics at Uni up till last year.

When it really starts messing with your head is when they tell you that for every positive there is a negative i.e. Anti-matter!

I won't try and elaborate, break out Google if you want to know more.

Dougal.

its like OXYGEN... its INVISIABLE! but we KNOW it is there... but there is a evidence of what oxytgen is made up of... now, say "dark matter" is oxygen for the universe... thats what they have NOW just discovered!

It's such a long and boring article, after i read the first sentence I [X].

very good info, dark matter and dark energy would be amazing to find..

wish we could find it

Currently scientists assume that dark matter makes up approximately 23 percent of the matter in the universe.
(approx. 73 % dark energy)


You cannot create or destroy energy resp. matter resp. time.


Dark matter cannot be neutrinos, because neutrinos belong to the leptones.

Intresting article. Learned something new today.

omg this is freakin cool!!

Yeah well maybe that's because of the immense pressure that doesn't exists in space?
And I don't think there is a need to know what's down there, it doesn't really get us anywhere.

So cool, but so mind boggling..