Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: Flipside on May 20, 2011, 02:18:02 pm
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-13462926
Interesting article, my only concern is that I thought it was Dark Matter that made up a lot of the missing mass, not energy, which was something seperate. Admittedly I haven't been keeping up with the latest findings, but I found the comment that energy could make up part of a volume rather weird. Maybe it's just the way the article is worded.
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Dark matter accounts for a small portion of the missing mass, dark energy for the overwhelming majority. They're different beasts.
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Yup, most of my confusion comes from the very old concept that photons in particular and energy in general have no mass, which isn't strictly true. I guess I'll have to do a bit of research :)
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Someone brought this to my attention the other night, and I was chuckling over the typical misleading headline. The data only "confirms" dark energy in the same sense that any positive result "confirms" a particular theoretical model. Interesting, sure, but it's not like someone snagged a cup of the stuff. :p
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Yep, that's basically it. Even energy has an intrinsic "mass" to it, given by the famous equation E=mc2.
Dark matter makes up the majority of the matter in the universe (outweighing "normal" matter by about a factor of five), while dark energy makes up the majority of the total mass, and "outweighs" dark matter by almost a factor of three.
I also find this is a useful chart. :) I think this one is using the data from WMAP.
(http://i.imgur.com/L6AtY.png)
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(http://img822.imageshack.us/img822/5841/pacmang.jpg) (http://img822.imageshack.us/i/pacmang.jpg/)
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lol
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Hang on, are we part that resembles Pac-man or are we the other part?
:shaking:
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.03% Represent!