Dark matter

Misconceptions skewered

I was surfing the web the other day, and I came across Sean Carroll’s Preposterous Universe blog. There's a post on there called True Facts About Cosmology (or, Misconceptions Skewered). I thought it looked interesting, because that’s my kind of thing. I do so dislike all the popscience and the lies to children, and it pleases me to see somebody else trying to put the record straight. But has he? I thought I’d take a look and give my opinion. Carroll leads in with something about…

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Dark matter

There’s plenty of evidence for dark matter, ranging from velocity dispersion, flat galactic rotation curves, and gravitational lensing. The evidence for dark matter is so good we can even map it out: Image credit NASA, ESA and R. Massey (California Institute of Technology), see spacetelescope.org There’s also plenty of papers and articles about dark matter candidates. Maxim Khlopov refers to WIMPs, axions, neutrinos, mirror-world particles, extra-dimensional particles, and black holes. Andreas Ringwald refers to neutralinos, gravitinos, sterile neutrinos, and axions. Kim Griest refers to MACHOs, molecular…

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Dark matter candidates

Everybody loves a mystery, and one of the best mysteries in physics is dark matter. As to where it starts, check out Brian Koberlain who said its origins can be traced to the 1600s. Or Alexis Bouvard who in 1821 said anomalies in the orbit of Uranus could be caused by dark matter. Or see the Ars Technica history of dark matter article by Stephanie Bucklin. She said in 1884 Lord Kelvin concluded that “many of our supposed thousand million stars, perhaps a great majority of…

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