A Galaxy of Horrors
Today is Dark Matter Day
2017 October 31
Illustration Credit & Copyright Tom Abel & Ralf Kaehler (KIPAC, SLAC), AMNH
Explanation: Is our universe haunted? It might look that way on this dark matter map. The gravity of unseen dark matter is the leading explanation for why galaxies rotate so fast, why galaxies orbit clusters so fast, why gravitational lenses so strongly deflect light, and why visible matter is distributed as it is both in the local universe and on the cosmic microwave background. The featured image from the American Museum of Natural History’s Hayden Planetarium Space Show Dark Universe highlights one example of how pervasive dark matter might haunt our universe. In this frame from a detailed computer simulation, complex filaments of dark matter, shown in black, are strewn about the universe like spider webs, while the relatively rare clumps of familiar baryonic matter are colored orange. These simulations are good statistical matches to astronomical observations. In what is perhaps a scarier turn of events, dark matter — although quite strange and in an unknown form — is no longer thought to be the strangest source of gravity in the universe. That honor now falls todark energy, a more uniform source of repulsive gravity that seems to now dominate the expansion of the entire universe.
Source: Astronomy Picture of the Day
a visual metaphor
Still no explanation
The Pie Chart Illustration
“Now, think about something. Think about what we are, you and me, and all the things that we know, all the places that we know, all the creatures, everything that you can imagine. Think about all the mountains, all the seas, and then begin to think about all the moons and the planets and the stars and the galaxies and the super galaxies and the super clusters and on and on and on. Think about it. You think it fills up everything. You think it’s vast and huge. 4.6%: it’s 4.6% of the totality. It’s nothing.”-Ra Uru Hu, The Human Design System – A Complete Guide