
Cosmic crash unmasks dark matter - rrf
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7587090.stm
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tdavis
It's things like galaxies with quadrillions of times the mass of our sun
colliding that make me remember just how small a piece of the universe we are.
It's awesome that they got to see that... And identify some dark matter in the
process!

~~~
mynameishere
Heck, our caveman brains taught us that size is a significant quality. If Ugg
kills a rabbit, and Garr kills an elephant, Garr is definitely the better
hunter. But what really matters is organization... Galaxies are a chaotic mess
compared with a rabbit.

~~~
Herring
> _what really matters is..._

"I used to think that the brain was the most wonderful organ in my body. Then
I realized who was telling me this."

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rflrob
This article seems to suffer from even more than the usual level of "The
author has no clue about the science" Syndrome, especially the bits about
gravitational lensing.

Now, I thought that galaxies were so sparse that most of the interactions two
"colliding" galaxies would have would be gravitational (rather than an actual
collision). In this case, the finding would _seem_ to imply that dark matter
isn't affected by gravity the same way, which would be _darned weird_.

~~~
lutorm
It's true that the stars in colliding galaxies don't actually collide, but
they are looking at the collision between two _clusters_ of galaxies. Clusters
contain hot, X-ray emitting gas. And gas _does_ collide, whereas the dark
matter passes through.

