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Is the Sun surrounded by dark matter ?

By T.K. Randall
August 12, 2012 · Comment icon

10 comments

Image Credit: NASA

University of Zurich researchers have made the claim after building a simulation of the Milky Way.

The team believe that previous techniques have underestimated the amount of dark matter present in the universe. "We are 99 per cent confident that there is dark matter near the Sun," said lead author Silvia Garbari. Dark matter is a theoretical and directly undetectable type of matter that is thought to account for a large part of the total mass of the universe.

"This could be the first evidence for a 'disc' of dark matter in our Galaxy, as recently predicted by theory and numerical simulations of galaxy formation, or it could mean that the dark matter halo of our galaxy is squashed, boosting the local dark matter density," said Garbari.

The researchers then developed a new unbiased technique that recovered the correct answer from the simulated data. Applying their technique to the positions and velocities of thousands of orange K dwarf stars near the Sun, they obtained a new measure of the local dark matter density.

Source: Economic Times | Comments (10)

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#1 Posted by papersamuel 12 years ago

What if Dark Matter was a living entity, a conscious entity? I saw this video yesterday and found it interesting that this article showed up after I had seen this video. fast forward to 4:25, in the lower left hand side of the screen you will see what looks like a orb with a tentacle sticking out of it. Now this video is all about UFOS but what if (if this is true footage) this particular scene was actually dark matter either energizing the sun or might be gaining energy from the sun. 52 seconds shows a pretty cool ufo around the sun. Ive also seen videos of stuff flying into the sun, but for ... [More]

#2 Posted by Imaginarynumber1 12 years ago

#3 Posted by notoverrated 12 years ago

so the only way they know dark matter is there is because there is unaccountable matter in the universe? that's some problem solving right there.

#4 Posted by Waspie_Dwarf 12 years ago

so the only way they know dark matter is there is because there is unaccountable matter in the universe? that's some problem solving right there. Pretty much. In simplified form (so that I can understand it ) how matter effects gravity is well understood and measurable. Observing galaxies and other objects in the universe shows that they are effected by more gravity than can be accounted for by normal matter, hence dark matter must exist.

#5 Posted by shaddow134 12 years ago

Again the mythical Dark Matter,but Where's the proof ? Dark matter versus Modified Gravity.Where do people stand? http://www.newstates...rk-matter-exist http://emsnews.wordp...as-i-predicted/ http://www.telegraph...ists-claim.html

#6 Posted by sepulchrave 12 years ago

Again the mythical Dark Matter,but Where's the proof ? Dark matter versus Modified Gravity.Where do people stand? There is a lot of evidence for dark matter. It seems to me that most criticisms of dark matter stem from the fact that we haven't found it yet. Of course if it actually is ``dark'' - i.e. doesn't interact with electromagnetic fields - then it really isn't that surprising that we haven't found it yet. I personally don't like dark matter (and I especially don't like dark energy). I really don't like modified Newtonian dynamics (MOND); I think the way they have to rewrite the operator... [More]

#7 Posted by Pyridium 12 years ago

Matter is defined as an atom. Dark matter, should be called "dark particles", because it is particles that have not formed into an atom. All matter, atoms, have a gravitational force...pull. All dark particles have the opposite force,..push, or as I call it, anti-gravity. Dark particles do interact with matter, the particles are simply "pushed away" from normal, atom matter. Dark matter is at rest while dark energy is the particles moving at close to the speed of light. For a sense of scale, 1 hydrogen atom can contain trillions of trillions of dark particles in the same volume of space. Again... [More]

#8 Posted by sepulchrave 12 years ago

Matter is defined as an atom. Dark matter, should be called "dark particles", because it is particles that have not formed into an atom. Sure. All matter, atoms, have a gravitational force...pull. All dark particles have the opposite force,..push, or as I call it, anti-gravity. No. Gravity is a mutually attractive monopole force which is proportional to a property we call ``mass''. An object with a positive mass will experience a gravitational attraction towards other objects with positive masses, and gravitational repulsion towards other objects with negative masses (as of yet no negative mas... [More]

#9 Posted by shaddow134 12 years ago

Sure. No. Gravity is a mutually attractive monopole force which is proportional to a property we call ``mass''. An object with a positive mass will experience a gravitational attraction towards other objects with positive masses, and gravitational repulsion towards other objects with negative masses (as of yet no negative mass object has been experimentally identified). The entire prediction of dark matter rests on it having (and, often, only having) positive mass. Perhaps you are thinking of ``dark energy''? The two are quite different. No. Dark matter interacts with regular ``hadronic'' and ... [More]

#10 Posted by sepulchrave 12 years ago

How can you say what Dark Matter or Dark Energy does or how it interacts,there is no proof whatsoever that they exist. You claim that Dark Matter has gravitational mass from what Evidence? Dark Matter is still theoretical and nobody is certain that it exists.. Dark matter wasn't hypothesized ``just because''. It was hypothesized because the rotation and collisions between galaxies indicated that - if gravity according to General Relativity is correct - there should be a significant additional quantity of mass in the outer halo of these galaxies. Since there is no visible evidence for this mass... [More]

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