badastronomy.com — This image is of the galaxy cluster CL0024+1652, a galactic city located a whopping 5 billion light years away! That means the light we see from this cluster left it five billion years ago, so we?re seeing this structure as it was when the Universe was just 2/3 its present age. Almost every small object in that image is a galaxy...
May 15, 2007 View in Crawl 4
rocketbirdMay 16, 2007
Looking at the high-res image, I thought I found some dark matter galaxy.It turned out to be some sort of stain :(
varbleMay 16, 2007
We already are exploring deep space, and you are alive, as far as I know. Oh, you mean in person. ;p
jtbandesMay 16, 2007
...light years OLD?<a class="user" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light-year">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light-year</a>
mrgreen4242May 16, 2007
While a light year is a measure of distance, it also implies that light traveling from that distance is that many years old. I think what the poster was getting as was 5 billion year old light makes the 6,000 year old Earth people (assuming they have some other silly timeline for the rest of the universe) look kind of stupid. I dunno, though, it was a bit incoherent.
cuardaimMay 16, 2007
I'm looking for more scientific backing before I readily believe that this is actually Dark Matter. Not willing to say in other direction if this is, or isn't DM.
jugalatorMay 16, 2007
Dark matter has mass, and thus causes gravitational lensing (with light looking bent from our/Hubble's point of view). That's one of few ways to even detect it, since it doesn't emit light.Here's a better example explaining the phenomenon alone:<a class="user" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Abell.lensing.arp.750pix.jpg">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Abell.lensing.arp.750pix.jpg</a>Looking carefully, you'll see the galaxies forming a "ring" shape around the center of the image.
sonitiMay 16, 2007
DUAL DISPLAY IS CRUISE CONTROL FOR AWESOME
badastronomerMay 18, 2007
That's a good question (but it's cool just to know about it at all). DM may be made of an exotic particle called a Weakly Interacting Massive Particle, or WIMP. They're predicted to have lots of weird properties. And whenever we understand particles better, there are practical applications. Nuclear energy, understanding the Sun better (the Sun's neutrinos - or really, the lack thereof - helped revolutionize particle physics!), and then... who knows what else. Studying the phsyical aspects of the Universe *always* has practical applications in the long run.
alien2069May 22, 2007
But a guy at work told me the universe is only 10,000 years old!
thirityfiveJun 5, 2007
how do we know what we are seeing is not just solar dust carried by solar wind?