Comments on: Minimum Mass for Galaxies Provides Insight on Dark Matter

By: Mozz

Mozz — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 03:11:10 +0000

"The scientists say clumps of dark matter may exist that contain no stars. The only dark matter clumps they can detect right now are those that are lit by stars."

?? – how is dark matter lit?

By: RetardedFishFrog

RetardedFishFrog — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 15:18:28 +0000

Have they ruled out hydrogen? The brightest galaxies would have the least amount of hydrogen obscuring the starlight, and the dimmer galaxies would have more hydrogen.

By: Al Hall

Al Hall — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 20:37:50 +0000

Jon Hanford –
Thanks for the advice… I don't know why I didn't of that before..

By: Astrofreak

Astrofreak — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 15:49:34 +0000

Hmm. The resolution of the pic is fine on my computer. Boy Nancy, that's a whole lot of stuff that sounds like "facts." Oh well, what would these fools do if they didn't have large grants and budgets to study mysterious stuff. Somewhere, the Flat Earth Society is recruiting new members and these "researchers" ought to sign up.

By: Freiddie

Freiddie — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 14:11:16 +0000

Thanks for the diagram.

By: Jon Hanford

Jon Hanford — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 11:35:22 +0000

It's OK, Al, you just need some time to wake up & smell the coffee (and maybe read up on the latest DM research). I'll be waiting……

By: Al Hall

Al Hall — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 05:18:59 +0000

If I wasn't so damn tired, I would respond to this article…
Here.. Let's take an intermission… Next time, Nancy….

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jY4DfM1zqfU

By: waldo

waldo — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 22:39:06 +0000

So I guess this puts an upper limit on the mass of the lightest
DM particle — 10^7 suns is a bit out of the reach of the LHC.
It would be amusing if DM was quantized with really big
honkin' masses.

By: Miguel V.

Miguel V. — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 19:34:35 +0000

Interesting results. Although, there is a very important conclusion which remains unstated: Galaxies MUST have Dark Matter.

Therefore, a isolated globular cluster is not a galaxy, neither are those "tidal dwarfs", which are though to be formed from gas stripped from galaxies during a close encounter or merger.

By: Jon Hanford

Jon Hanford — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 19:32:36 +0000

Nancy, thanks again into your insightful article on this monumental discovery concerning mass limits to dGs (within 30 kpc) of our MWG & its' tie in with current models of DM distribution in our galaxy. The paper announcing this discovery was posted today (arXiv:0808.3772v1) and mentions that gravitational forces from our MWG did not account for this result. The authors go on to point out this result may have resulted from Hot DM (rather than the more commonly used Cold Dark Matter [CDM] model commonly used by astrophysicists. In either case, I think this finding is trying to tell us something important about our universe and how it works.

By: Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 18:30:57 +0000

Called UCI and bigger image is now available and inserted. Enjoy!

By: Freiddie

Freiddie — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 17:27:52 +0000

Do you have a higher res image of that diagram? I can barely make out the text (even after clicking the image).

By: John Mendenhall

John Mendenhall — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 16:46:41 +0000

Excellent, excellent work. What a startling result! Keep going, guys!