July 18, 2003 – Michael Herman's Blog (2003-2016)

Dark Matter Technology

BBC reporting… Astronomers have made a ‘mass map’ of one of the most massive structures in the Universe, showing how much more there is to it than glowing stars and gas. The object is a distant cluster of galaxies that contains ‘dark matter,’ the unknown component that comprises most of the mass of the Universe. The map shows it is distributed in much the same way as are the visible stars.

Hubble photos show dark matter on the left
in blue and just stars on the right, undistorted.

Clusters of galaxies are the largest stable systems in the Universe. They contain not only stars, gas and dust but something else as well. Astronomers do not know what that something is. They know it is there because they can see the effect its gravity has on the motions of stars and galaxies, but because they have never seen this ‘dark matter’ they do not know what it is.

Dark matter makes up about 80-85% of the matter in the Universe. Many types of objects are suspected ranging from dead stars to hoards of sub-atomic particles.

Makes me wonder if OpenSpaceTech wouldn’t be more aptly named “DarkMatterTech” since it seems to be where we explore and cut through the things that blur and distort clarity and movement in organization.