Astronomers Create Detailed Hydrogen Map of Milky Way Galaxy. Using data from the 64-m CSIRO radio telescope in Australia and the 100-m Max-Planck radio telescope in Germany, an international team of astronomers has created a detailed density map of neutral atomic hydrogen in our Milky Way Galaxy. This HI4PI map was produced using data from the 100-m Max-Planck radio telescope in Effelsberg, Germany and the 64-m CSIRO radio telescope in Parkes, Australia. The image colors reflect gas at differing velocities. The plane of the Milky Way Galaxy runs horizontally across the middle of the image. The Magellanic Clouds can be seen at the lower right. The study looked at neutral atomic hydrogen, the most abundant element in space, across the whole sky in a survey known as HI4PI. “Although neutral hydrogen is fairly easy to detect with modern radio telescopes, mapping the whole sky is a significant achievement,” said co-author Dr. “The study revealed for the first time the fine details of structures between stars in the Milky Way,” said co-author Prof.
N. Journals. Wired.com. Dark Matter Search Considers Exotic Possibilities. Ever since astronomers realized that most of the matter in the universe is invisible, they have tried to sort out what that obscure stuff might be. But three decades of increasingly sophisticated searches have found no sign of dark matter, causing scientists to question some of their basic ideas about this elusive substance. In October the most sensitive experiment looking for proof of the leading candidate for dark matter—theorized particles called WIMPs (weakly interacting massive particles)—reported null results, disappointing scientists once again. Now some researchers are reexamining dark matter candidates once written off as unlikely, and considering less satisfactory ideas such as the possibility that dark matter will turn out to be made of something more or less undetectable.
Physicists still have no proof that dark matter exists at all, but the evidence for it is substantial. If WIMPs do exist, they are running out of places to hide. Science Daily: News & Articles in Science, Health, Environment & Technology. Science Codex | Science news, science articles, all day, every day.