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	<title>Comments on: Dark thoughts</title>
	<atom:link href="http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2006/08/21/dark-thoughts/feed/" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml" />
	<link>http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2006/08/21/dark-thoughts/</link>
	<description>I am an astronomer, writer, and skeptic. I likes reality the way it is, and I aims to keep it that way. My real name is Phil Plait, and I run the Bad Astronomy blog.</description>
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		<title>By: TR</title>
		<link>http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2006/08/21/dark-thoughts/comment-page-1/#comment-19586</link>
		<dc:creator>TR</dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Thu, 24 Aug 2006 01:32:29 +0000</pubDate>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2006/08/21/dark-thoughts/#comment-19586</guid>
		<description>Xanthir, your first and second paragraphs seemed to repeat the supposition that I was questioning, but your third point is pretty compelling.</description>
		<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Xanthir, your first and second paragraphs seemed to repeat the supposition that I was questioning, but your third point is pretty compelling.</p>
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		<title>By: TR</title>
		<link>http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2006/08/21/dark-thoughts/comment-page-1/#comment-19585</link>
		<dc:creator>TR</dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Thu, 24 Aug 2006 01:27:33 +0000</pubDate>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2006/08/21/dark-thoughts/#comment-19585</guid>
		<description>Thanks PK.</description>
		<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Thanks PK.</p>
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		<title>By: Xanthir</title>
		<link>http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2006/08/21/dark-thoughts/comment-page-1/#comment-19587</link>
		<dc:creator>Xanthir</dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Thu, 24 Aug 2006 01:22:55 +0000</pubDate>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2006/08/21/dark-thoughts/#comment-19587</guid>
		<description>&lt;blockquote&gt;How does anti-matter relate to dark matter?&lt;/blockquote&gt;
It doesn&#039;t.  Anti-matter is essentially the same as ordinary matter with its charge reversed.  Otherwise, it acts exactly like ordinary matter.

Dark matter is a special form of ordinary matter that&#039;s non-baryonic.  This means that it doesn&#039;t interact with the electromagnetic force.  Light goes straight through it without stopping, slowing, or scattering.  Magnetic fields don&#039;t move it.  Nothing EM can affect it in any way.  I believe that it still interacts with the weak and strong forces at least somewhat (someone correct me if I&#039;m wrong), though those are absolutely useless on astronomical scales.  Thus, we&#039;re left with gravity being the only significant force that affects dark matter.</description>
		<content:encoded><![CDATA[<blockquote><p>How does anti-matter relate to dark matter?</p></blockquote>
<p>It doesn&#8217;t.  Anti-matter is essentially the same as ordinary matter with its charge reversed.  Otherwise, it acts exactly like ordinary matter.</p>
<p>Dark matter is a special form of ordinary matter that&#8217;s non-baryonic.  This means that it doesn&#8217;t interact with the electromagnetic force.  Light goes straight through it without stopping, slowing, or scattering.  Magnetic fields don&#8217;t move it.  Nothing EM can affect it in any way.  I believe that it still interacts with the weak and strong forces at least somewhat (someone correct me if I&#8217;m wrong), though those are absolutely useless on astronomical scales.  Thus, we&#8217;re left with gravity being the only significant force that affects dark matter.</p>
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		<title>By: Xanthir</title>
		<link>http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2006/08/21/dark-thoughts/comment-page-1/#comment-19588</link>
		<dc:creator>Xanthir</dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Thu, 24 Aug 2006 01:18:26 +0000</pubDate>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2006/08/21/dark-thoughts/#comment-19588</guid>
		<description>&lt;blockquote&gt;My question is; how can we know that itâ€™s nonbaryonic dark matter?&lt;/blockquote&gt;
It&#039;s fairly simple.  Of the light matter, as you mentioned, you have either gas clouds or galaxies.  The galaxies only make up about 10% of the light mass, and they&#039;re relatively compact, so they made it through the collision pretty much without, erm, collision.  The gas, though, collided a lot.

Now, the mass of the dark matter and the properties of the lensing indicate that there was a *lot* of it.  There was definitely more dark matter than there was light gas.  If it was baryonic, it would have interacted in the same fashion as the light gas - it would have collided and produced shockwaves.  Since it didn&#039;t, we can be fairly certain that it wasn&#039;t baryonic.

Plus, baryonic matter interferes with light (because it interacts with the electromagnetic force).  Clouds of gas dim or block out light, or they glow from within because they&#039;ve got stars inside of them.  However, the giant mass of dark matter isn&#039;t interfering with light at all, except for the gravitational lensing.  Thus, another indication that its nonbaryonic.</description>
		<content:encoded><![CDATA[<blockquote><p>My question is; how can we know that itâ€™s nonbaryonic dark matter?</p></blockquote>
<p>It&#8217;s fairly simple.  Of the light matter, as you mentioned, you have either gas clouds or galaxies.  The galaxies only make up about 10% of the light mass, and they&#8217;re relatively compact, so they made it through the collision pretty much without, erm, collision.  The gas, though, collided a lot.</p>
<p>Now, the mass of the dark matter and the properties of the lensing indicate that there was a *lot* of it.  There was definitely more dark matter than there was light gas.  If it was baryonic, it would have interacted in the same fashion as the light gas &#8211; it would have collided and produced shockwaves.  Since it didn&#8217;t, we can be fairly certain that it wasn&#8217;t baryonic.</p>
<p>Plus, baryonic matter interferes with light (because it interacts with the electromagnetic force).  Clouds of gas dim or block out light, or they glow from within because they&#8217;ve got stars inside of them.  However, the giant mass of dark matter isn&#8217;t interfering with light at all, except for the gravitational lensing.  Thus, another indication that its nonbaryonic.</p>
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		<title>By: PK</title>
		<link>http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2006/08/21/dark-thoughts/comment-page-1/#comment-19590</link>
		<dc:creator>PK</dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Wed, 23 Aug 2006 22:55:28 +0000</pubDate>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2006/08/21/dark-thoughts/#comment-19590</guid>
		<description>I guess these specific observations indicate that Modified Newtonian Dynamics (MOND) does not work without becoming horribly complicated. So this might be the dark matter equivalent of Rutherford&#039;s demonstration that atoms have nuclei.</description>
		<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>I guess these specific observations indicate that Modified Newtonian Dynamics (MOND) does not work without becoming horribly complicated. So this might be the dark matter equivalent of Rutherford&#8217;s demonstration that atoms have nuclei.</p>
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		<title>By: PK</title>
		<link>http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2006/08/21/dark-thoughts/comment-page-1/#comment-19589</link>
		<dc:creator>PK</dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Wed, 23 Aug 2006 22:50:24 +0000</pubDate>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2006/08/21/dark-thoughts/#comment-19589</guid>
		<description>TR: the best models for nucleosynthesis and the structure of the CMB puts very strong bounds on the amount of baryonic matter. And it turns out that there is much more matter than can be explained by invoking baryonic dark matter. So it seems that they&#039;re looking for exotic particles. If I am not mistaken, the #1 suspect is a stable remnant of supersymmetric interactions.</description>
		<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>TR: the best models for nucleosynthesis and the structure of the CMB puts very strong bounds on the amount of baryonic matter. And it turns out that there is much more matter than can be explained by invoking baryonic dark matter. So it seems that they&#8217;re looking for exotic particles. If I am not mistaken, the #1 suspect is a stable remnant of supersymmetric interactions.</p>
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		<title>By: TR</title>
		<link>http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2006/08/21/dark-thoughts/comment-page-1/#comment-19591</link>
		<dc:creator>TR</dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Wed, 23 Aug 2006 17:30:15 +0000</pubDate>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2006/08/21/dark-thoughts/#comment-19591</guid>
		<description>A follow-on (of sorts) to Christopher&#039;s question:

I understand how the results show that the majority of each cluster&#039;s original mass did not interact during the collision.  And given that much of this un-reactive mass can&#039;t be seen, it must (by definition) be dark matter.

My question is; how can we know that it&#039;s &lt;b&gt;nonbaryonic&lt;/b&gt; dark matter?

The assumption here seems to be that all of the matter in the clusters was either hot X-ray emitting intergalactic gas, visible galaxies, or &lt;i&gt;non&lt;/i&gt;baryonic dark matter.  Isn&#039;t it possible that the clusters originally consisted of &lt;i&gt;baryonic&lt;/i&gt; dark matter which, like the galaxies, did not interact during the collision?

Presumably, the galaxies themselves are ordinary (baryonic) &lt;i&gt;visible&lt;/i&gt; matter, and they did not interact during the collision.  Couldn&#039;t galaxy-sized &quot;blobs&quot; of baryonic &lt;i&gt;dark&lt;/i&gt; matter also behave as non-interactive particles during the collision?</description>
		<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>A follow-on (of sorts) to Christopher&#8217;s question:</p>
<p>I understand how the results show that the majority of each cluster&#8217;s original mass did not interact during the collision.  And given that much of this un-reactive mass can&#8217;t be seen, it must (by definition) be dark matter.</p>
<p>My question is; how can we know that it&#8217;s <b>nonbaryonic</b> dark matter?</p>
<p>The assumption here seems to be that all of the matter in the clusters was either hot X-ray emitting intergalactic gas, visible galaxies, or <i>non</i>baryonic dark matter.  Isn&#8217;t it possible that the clusters originally consisted of <i>baryonic</i> dark matter which, like the galaxies, did not interact during the collision?</p>
<p>Presumably, the galaxies themselves are ordinary (baryonic) <i>visible</i> matter, and they did not interact during the collision.  Couldn&#8217;t galaxy-sized &#8220;blobs&#8221; of baryonic <i>dark</i> matter also behave as non-interactive particles during the collision?</p>
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