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Dark matter and time.

Siva said Feb 10, 2007, 9:33 AM:

Since time cannot exist without space or matter, the question of the exploration of dark matter, which occupies the major portion of the universe is of paramount importance. The mystery of dark matter which is one of the greatest mysteries of the Universe is on the verge of being solved thanks to research by astronomers. They have apparently achieved a breakthrough of building up a picture of dark matter whose existence was first postulated in 1933.

Scientists knew that there was more to the universe than could be detected through telescopes. But it is only now that 3D image of this invisible dark matter could be captured. No body has seen dark matter but it is calculated to occupy six times larger space than visible matter.

More than 70 astronomers from Europe, America and Japan, using the Hubble telescope could build up an image of dark matter in a region of space that dates back to 7 billion years. the principle of gravitational lensing was used for this purpose.

More details will follow.

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Re: Dark matter and time.

Chaparral said Feb 11, 2007, 4:07 AM:

I read recently that the search for dark matter is also going on underground, in giant particle accelerators. The race is on!

Re: Dark matter and time.

Siva said Feb 11, 2007, 6:50 AM:

The astronomers used a phenomenon “gravitational lensing”, predicted by Albert Einstein to probe an area of the sky nine times the size of the full moon. This phenomenon of gravitational lensing occurs when light from far away galaxies is bent by the gravitational influence of matter en route.
The astronomers exploited the technique by observing the distorted light from the far away galaxies to reconstruct the missing mass which remained hidden from the probing conventional telescopes.
Dr Richard Massey of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, one of the lead scientists in the team said: “We have, for the first time, mapped the large scale distribution of dark matter in the universe.”
“Dark matter is a mysterious and invisible form of matter, about which we know very little, yet it dominates the mass of the universe,” Dr Massey said. One of the most important findings of this study is that dark matter appears to form an invisible skeleton around which the visible universe is superimposed. all this proves the theoretical calculations made so far.
“A filamentary web of dark matter is threaded through the entire universe, and acts as scaffolding within which the ordinary matter- including stars, galaxies and planets - can later be built. Dr Massey said. “The most surprising aspect of our map is how unsurprising it is. Overall, we seem to understand really well what happens during the formation of structure and the evolution of the universe,” he said.
Further research would reveal the intricacies of matter and thereby of time. We have to wait till that.