Dark matter revealed

I interrupt my surf week to draw attention to some great news – there is news on the Symmetry Breaking blog that strong evidence for Dark Matter has just been announced by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and Chandra X-ray Observatory, see the official announcement here. The evidence comes from observation of galaxy collisions, exactly as in the previous case of the bullet cluster collision (see DM posts below and below).

In the words of the official announcement.. “A powerful collision of galaxy clusters has been captured by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and Chandra X-ray Observatory. This clash of clusters provides striking evidence for dark matter and insight into its properties.The observations of the cluster known as MACS J0025.4-1222 indicate that a titanic collision has separated the dark from ordinary matter and provide an independent confirmation of a similar effect detected previously in a target dubbed the Bullet Cluster. These new results show that the Bullet Cluster is not an anomalous case”

Pic from http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2008/32/image/a/

So much for the skeptics! However, it should be pointed out that the above experiment points to the existence of Dark Matter, not to its nature (what particles make up DM?). Hopefully, such info will be forthcoming from particle physics experiments such as the UK Zepplin experiment, or even the LHC at CERN.

P.S. official solution to Hubble puzzle next week (although several commentators have more or less got it)