Comments on: Do All Galaxies Have Tentacles?

By: Jorge

Jorge — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 00:28:17 +0000

Andrew, you mean this one?

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap011007.html

There's a head-on spiral there over one of the reddish gravitationally lensed arcs, but the detail is quite low (as would be expected, since Abell 2218 is very far away)

By: Todd Coolen

Todd Coolen — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 10:42:40 +0000

With the power of a billion suns in the background absorbing (or blocking) light in the foreground, how could anyone imagine this is not something exotic. When you are in the forest looking at a tree, you may not know it's a forest until you see the whole forest. It could be the reason we do not see 'layers' between the spiral arms here at home. I for one, say "It is dark matter".

By: Jon Hanford

Jon Hanford — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 10:26:47 +0000

2 images of superimposed galaxies immediately come to mind. Check out Hubble images of NGC 2207/IC 2163 & NGC 3314a/NGC 3314b. I also seem to recall seeing several other examples of superimposed galaxies detected ovey the past 10-20 years, so this image, beautiful as it is, is certainly not the first of its type & almost certainly NOT a direct image of Dark Matter.

By: Andrew

Andrew — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 05:16:28 +0000

I'm certain that the image noted above is not the first ever of a galaxy superimposed on another, but it definitely has great detail. I did a quick search on the APOD website and came up with an image of Abell 2218 which also appears to have a galaxy superimposed over another, with the dust filaments included. I don't think I can post the link here, though; I tried and I think a filter saw a link and deleted it.

By: Phil

Phil — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 03:47:47 +0000

Ok… That's a cool picture but I doubt that this is "Dark Matter" or an explanation for this missing "Dark Matter" people have been looking for…. It seems the article states the tentacles are "rarely so visible" which also implies this phenomena has been seen before… maybe not to the same extent??

I think Dark Matter is supposed to be something exotic and mysterious… like the Flying Spaghetti Monster intended!!!

By: Bridh Hancock

Bridh Hancock — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 02:27:52 +0000

Interesting; detailed yet obscure. More work and examples required. No comment yet.
So long ago and far away.
Where are our mind-over-matter astro-probes? Calling all DarkMatter entities! Reveal yourselves, please!

By: RetardedFishFrog

RetardedFishFrog — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 02:11:28 +0000

The ancient Greek's thought Zeus sat on Mount Olympus throwing lightning bolts. Astronomers see extra gravity, and they invent mythical dark matter. Now they can see an example of what is likely to be the cause for the observed, but unexplained, gravity. Astronomers already ruled this out because they couldn't see it, and now it will take an entire generation before opinion comes around because careers and money are wrapped up in dark matter research. Eventually this will look as silly as cold fusion, flat Earth, Moon hoax, etc.

By: Jon Hanford

Jon Hanford — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 18:43:17 +0000

The 'dark matter' in the foreground spiral seems to me to be ordinary gas & dust in the outer disk of this spiral. As seen without the background spiral, this galaxy would probably look like any ordinary Sb or SBb galaxy with its' extended disk.

By: Hentai-san

Hentai-san — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 14:18:05 +0000

Without tentacles, how would they do tentacle sex scenes?

By: Bill Illis

Bill Illis — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 14:01:43 +0000

The starless dust and gas field around the smaller galaxy is almost the exact same size as the Dark Matter map article from a few days ago.

I'm a little surprised that this has not been seen before as I imagine it was expected there would be a thin halo of dust and gas around galaxies.

By: Chuck Lam

Chuck Lam — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 13:03:58 +0000

Interesting! Could the dark region of the subject be analogous to the 'metal filings' outline of the magnetic field of a childs simple 'horse shoe magnet?' Where in this observation, the 'metal filings' analogy could be mysterious dark matter responding to gravity. Occum's razor.

By: john

john — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 11:09:40 +0000

Ah! another mystery, and a beautiful picture to boot. Joy.

By: Fenring

Fenring — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 08:42:19 +0000

There's your 22% of missing matter, right there!

By: Astrofiend

Astrofiend — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 01:31:45 +0000

Beautiful image. I must say that some of my favourite Hubble shots are those of galaxies in silhouette against background galaxies. Gotta love the backlighting for observational purposes!

By: turkka

turkka — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 19:27:27 +0000

Yes. It must be a disk of dark matter. Like they predicted, also in the news today.

By: watchful stone guardian

watchful stone guardian — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 18:53:01 +0000

They found Dark Matter!!!

By: RapidEye

RapidEye — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 16:51:12 +0000

No Jorge, its the Flying Spaghetti Monster!!!

By: Jorge

Jorge — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 16:35:57 +0000

Astronomers just found Cthulhu…

By: Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 16:22:42 +0000

working on it……
Nancy

By: Kendall

Kendall — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 16:14:23 +0000

Can't see the picture…