Physics Mysteries Coming Unraveled

Yesterday the big news (other than America's annual birthday party) was that the Higgs Boson has finally been seen. Unless you've been living with the Amish you know that the Higgs is one on the last pieces of the Standard Model of Physics puzzle to be put in place.

Well today comes news that Jörg Dietrich, an astronomer at the University Observatory Munich in Germany and his colleagues have mapped a dark matter filament that connects two massive galaxies.

“Filaments of dark matter have never been seen before,” says Dietrich, whose team reports the finding online July 4 in Nature. “For the first time, we successfully mapped one.”

From the Science News Article: "To improve the odds of seeing one, Dietrich and colleagues focused on Abell 222/223, a pair of galaxy clusters that are close together and thus should be connected by a relatively massive filament. X-ray observations had already revealed a ribbon of hot gas between the clusters — the first hint of a dark matter link. Using the Subaru telescope in Hawaii, the researchers looked at light from distant galaxies passing through the space between the clusters."

"The distorted shapes of the galaxies revealed a thick cord of matter with a mass comparable to that of a small galaxy cluster. Gas can account for only about 9 percent of that mass. Dark matter seems to make up the rest."

Now can we get on with inventing warp drive?