Re:Student astronomer finds missing galactic matter
by samschooler on Saturday February 06, 2021 @10:22AM
(#26047103)
A few things:
1. This isn’t a “student astronomer” this is a full on doctoral candidate researcher. Give her the authority she deserves.
2. This isn’t dark matter/energy. This is baryonic matter that is really hard to detect. Nor is it all of the missing matter, it’s just a smaller piece of it, proving that our current estimate of baryonic matter _may_ be inaccurate if we can find more of this stuff than we accounted for.
2. This is a really cool method! We’ve known for a long time that our atmosphere has a significant effect on light coming though it. It’s a great idea to extend that to find a sort of “extra-atmosphere”/gas floating around in space.
I’m excited to sit down and read this through to see their methodology. My only worry right now is: a straight line of gas is a little too perfect? Couldn’t this be more than a line, and possibly a more standard cloud (like other existing structures we know about). I ask because stars are pin points and if you’re getting data telling you it’s a line in the X axis, for example, you’ll also need data in the Y axis to prove that it’s not taller.
Really hope we can extend this to find more undetectable matter and get our equations in check.
1. This isn’t a “student astronomer” this is a full on doctoral candidate researcher. Give her the authority she deserves.
2. This isn’t dark matter/energy. This is baryonic matter that is really hard to detect. Nor is it all of the missing matter, it’s just a smaller piece of it, proving that our current estimate of baryonic matter _may_ be inaccurate if we can find more of this stuff than we accounted for.
2. This is a really cool method! We’ve known for a long time that our atmosphere has a significant effect on light coming though it. It’s a great idea to extend that to find a sort of “extra-atmosphere”/gas floating around in space.
I’m excited to sit down and read this through to see their methodology. My only worry right now is: a straight line of gas is a little too perfect? Couldn’t this be more than a line, and possibly a more standard cloud (like other existing structures we know about). I ask because stars are pin points and if you’re getting data telling you it’s a line in the X axis, for example, you’ll also need data in the Y axis to prove that it’s not taller.
Really hope we can extend this to find more undetectable matter and get our equations in check.