How to use Dark Matter to look further back in space (and time!)
Today, at the American Astronomical Society’s 223rd conference meeting, the Frontier Fields program held a press conference to discuss one of the newest and most ground-breaking programs the space telescopes have ever been used for.
The Hubble Space Telescope, NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, and Spitzer Space Telescope are looking into very deep galaxy fields to attempt to look even further back in space than ever observed before.
The way they’re able to accomplish this is by using gravitational lensing caused by dark matter. Since light interacting with dark matter is achromatic, that is that it doesn’t affect how the colour of light shifts, astronomers are able to get very precise measurements of extremely far and immensely old objects in our Universe.
This video was released by the Space Telescope Science Institute today with the press conference, narrated by Frank Summers to give the public a primer of what this program will be working to accomplish!
Press release: http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2014/01/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-M2r2fhh6eM//cdn.embedly.com/widgets/platform.js
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Gravity lens
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Dark matter is just a patch to incomplete and incorrect models. Not a proven reality.
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Black holes are not proven but the inference is based on some pretty concrete observations. It seems to me to be more than just a patch even though the idea remains a theory.
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Patrick Savalle Well that’s the thing about science, you don’t ever prove anything. You get more and more evidence to support a hypothesis to formulate a theory that is supported by more and more evidence.
The evidence for dark matter is exceedingly large, whether it be with the gravitational lens or with the linear rotation of galaxies. Every theory can be seen as “incomplete” because with science you’re always looking to gain more and more observation and evidence. Your work is never done. That’s the beauty of science, always something more we can learn.
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I agree – if science were considered empirical truth we’d have no urge to question or pursue, being the curious species we are. Science is a plethora of theorems which, if proven, are no longer science but fact. Facts are plastic however lol seems we’ll go on for as long as we exist looking for that one truth, that “theory” of everything.
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Well, that’s the thing i like about math, you prove everything.
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