So, what's happening on Dark Matter hypothesis these days? Do any of you guys know how much we have progressed in actually finding dark matter?

Any updates?

What is 'dark matter'?

Some of us are still hung on why white matters, like this one:





Do you mean the one on parallel universe..
or
are you referring to the alter-ego of gravity?

or is this linked to the CERN Lab?

Lukin,
unless you flesh the subject I'm going to ask you just one question,
what's the color of the cat you are holding, I mean under the white fur??

it seems just another way for scientists to push the big bang theory on us again... it emits no light and cannot be seen... just another mathematical equation someone came up to try to see why the universe is expanding the way it is...


personally, i think the universe is eternal and has no boundaries, so the "new" galaxies they find are just coming into our field of view...maybe when the James Webb space telescope goes up, they will be able to know more about how the universe works without guessing with some mathematical equations...

http://jwst.nasa.gov/

mighty, I understand the dark matter is assumed to bind the stars together in close proximity and form galaxies as there is not enough mass to have a kind of gravitation that would form clusters of stars.

Expansion of universe and speeding away of galaxies from each other is being explained with the concept of dark energy.

Guess bit of gray matter is required to understand dark matter..;-)

it's the same thing... a mathematical formula.. they know that gravity holds the galaxies together...remember the big black hole with the mass of a trillion suns at the center of every galaxy?

It seems that They have come to an equation that leads them to believe that we are closer and closer to extinction...

yea, it seems so... a scared public likes to donate more money...

Due to gravitational lensing, the location of dark matter has been accurately mapped in large parts of the universe. The best theory of the physical makeup of dark matter is still WIMPS (weakly interactive massive particles) but, due to the weakly interactive part, the detectors haven't found the actual particles yet.

As CERN cranks up the LHC's power, it is hoped the increased mass of the collisions will provide enough energy to produce dark matter.





In addition, gamma ray sources from the center of our galaxy appear to provide evidence that dark matter emits radiation upon annihilation.

From NASA:

"A new study of gamma-ray light from the center of our galaxy makes the strongest case to date that some of this emission may arise from dark matter, an unknown substance making up most of the material universe. Using publicly available data from NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, independent scientists at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab), the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA), the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the University of Chicago have developed new maps showing that the galactic center produces more high-energy gamma rays than can be explained by known sources and that this excess emission is consistent with some forms of dark matter.

"The new maps allow us to analyze the excess and test whether more conventional explanations, such as the presence of undiscovered pulsars or cosmic-ray collisions on gas clouds, can account for it," said Dan Hooper, an astrophysicist at Fermilab in Batavia, Ill., and a lead author of the study. "The signal we find cannot be explained by currently proposed alternatives and is in close agreement with the predictions of very simple dark matter models.

The galactic center teems with gamma-ray sources, from interacting binary systems and isolated pulsars to supernova remnants and particles colliding with interstellar gas. It's also where astronomers expect to find the galaxy's highest density of dark matter, which only affects normal matter and radiation through its gravity. Large amounts of dark matter attract normal matter, forming a foundation upon which visible structures, like galaxies, are built.

No one knows the true nature of dark matter, but WIMPs, or Weakly Interacting Massive Particles, represent a leading class of candidates. Theorists have envisioned a wide range of WIMP types, some of which may either mutually annihilate or produce an intermediate, quickly decaying particle when they collide. Both of these pathways end with the production of gamma rays -- the most energetic form of light -- at energies within the detection range of Fermi's Large Area Telescope (LAT).

When astronomers carefully subtract all known gamma-ray sources from LAT observations of the galactic center, a patch of leftover emission remains. This excess appears most prominent at energies between 1 and 3 billion electron volts (GeV) -- roughly a billion times greater than that of visible light -- and extends outward at least 5,000 light-years from the galactic center.

Hooper and his colleagues conclude that annihilations of dark matter particles with a mass between 31 and 40 GeV provide a remarkable fit for the excess based on its gamma-ray spectrum, its symmetry around the galactic center, and its overall brightness. Writing in a paper submitted to the journal Physical Review D, the researchers say that these features are difficult to reconcile with other explanations proposed so far, although they note that plausible alternatives not requiring dark matter may yet materialize.

"Dark matter in this mass range can be probed by direct detection and by the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), so if this is dark matter, we're already learning about its interactions from the lack of detection so far," said co-author Tracy Slatyer, a theoretical physicist at MIT in Cambridge, Mass. "This is a very exciting signal, and while the case is not yet closed, in the future we might well look back and say this was where we saw dark matter annihilation for the first time."

The researchers caution that it will take multiple sightings – in other astronomical objects, the LHC or in some of the direct-detection experiments now being conducted around the world -- to validate their dark matter interpretation.

"Our case is very much a process-of-elimination argument. We made a list, scratched off things that didn't work, and ended up with dark matter," said co-author Douglas Finkbeiner, a professor of astronomy and physics at the CfA, also in Cambridge.

"This study is an example of innovative techniques applied to Fermi data by the science community," said Peter Michelson, a professor of physics at Stanford University in California and the LAT principal investigator. "The Fermi LAT Collaboration continues to examine the extraordinarily complex central region of the galaxy, but until this study is complete we can neither confirm nor refute this interesting analysis."

While the great amount of dark matter expected at the galactic center should produce a strong signal, competition from many other gamma-ray sources complicates any case for a detection. But turning the problem on its head provides another way to attack it. Instead of looking at the largest nearby collection of dark matter, look where the signal has fewer challenges.

Dwarf galaxies orbiting the Milky Way lack other types of gamma-ray emitters and contain large amounts of dark matter for their size – in fact, they're the most dark-matter-dominated sources known. But there's a tradeoff. Because they lie much farther away and contain much less total dark matter than the center of the Milky Way, dwarf galaxies produce a much weaker signal and require many years of observations to establish a secure detection..."

You can see the animation at the NASA site

http://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/fermi-data-tantalize-with-new-clues-to-dark-matter

Thank you Metalwing

thank you metalwing :)

When and if they actual run into dark matter, they won't realize it until it's too late. The so called universe is just a bunch of numbers. The internet is probably a reverse engineered universe; more numbers.