by apodman » Thu Sep 18, 2008 11:49 pm
Tatiana wrote:It would be interesting to find out if dark matter is made up of point sources or not. How could we test that?
Remotely? Difficult until you create a new method. If gravity is all we can see of it, that's all we can measure, and a gravity detector with a resolution of 1E-19 meter at a distance of millions of light years isn't on the shelf at Radio Shack this season.
In the Laboratory? Not currently possible. However, we don't need to go to far away places to get some Dark Matter to bring to the lab. Presumably there's plenty of it closer, but we need two new methods: one to contain and transport it, and one to analyze it once we have captured it.
By inference? That's a good possibility, like the inference used to locate Dark Matter from the gravitational lens observations. But you need to match available observation methods with a new theory that will test for the answer to your question, so put your visualization circuits in overdrive.
A
thought experiment! Not hard science, but modern physicists love them. Okay, I'm done thinking now, and here's what I saw:
Apart from an occasional singularity, the dimensions of space and time are smooth and continuous. Everything else comes in discrete pieces, so Dark Matter and Dark Energy come in discrete pieces (particle-like and ray-like entities) too.
[quote="Tatiana"]It would be interesting to find out if dark matter is made up of point sources or not. How could we test that?[/quote]
Remotely? Difficult until you create a new method. If gravity is all we can see of it, that's all we can measure, and a gravity detector with a resolution of 1E-19 meter at a distance of millions of light years isn't on the shelf at Radio Shack this season.
In the Laboratory? Not currently possible. However, we don't need to go to far away places to get some Dark Matter to bring to the lab. Presumably there's plenty of it closer, but we need two new methods: one to contain and transport it, and one to analyze it once we have captured it.
By inference? That's a good possibility, like the inference used to locate Dark Matter from the gravitational lens observations. But you need to match available observation methods with a new theory that will test for the answer to your question, so put your visualization circuits in overdrive.
A [i]thought experiment[/i]! Not hard science, but modern physicists love them. Okay, I'm done thinking now, and here's what I saw:
Apart from an occasional singularity, the dimensions of space and time are smooth and continuous. Everything else comes in discrete pieces, so Dark Matter and Dark Energy come in discrete pieces (particle-like and ray-like entities) too.