PieFed
Milky Way is embedded in a 'large-scale sheet' of dark matter, which explains motions of nearby galaxies
Rimu
https://phys.org/news/2026-01-milky-embedded-large-scale-sheet.html
The algorithm started from regions in the early universe, with a mass distribution based on observations of the cosmic microwave background. With a powerful computer, the model then evolved to reproduce the present-day characteristics of the Local Group, with the mass, position and velocity of the Milky Way and the Andromeda galaxy, and the positions and velocities of 31 galaxies just outside the Local Group. This resulted in the creation of simulations that may be considered “virtual twins” of our cosmic environment.
Share on Mastodon
Share on Reddit
Share on WhatsApp59 Comments
Comments from other communities
Headline is waaaay too overstated. A computer simulation model showed that an arrangement of dark matter as described would create an output that matches some of the things we observe in reality. But that’s SUPER far from scientists declaring that this is how the galaxy actually is.
m3t00🌎🇺🇦i know. they all do it more/less. that article has a few links. also have another board with lower standards. mostly just me for picture articles; https://midwest.social/c/science . my eyes are getting bad for reading/typing. 62
It’s so overstated, the existence of dark matter hasn’t even been proven yet.
I thought the existence of something out there was pretty well understood. We just didn’t know exactly what it is and so it’s called “dark matter”
Dark matter is like x and y in a quadratic equation in maths. We don’t know what it is but we know it is there. It effecting the equation such that you are getting a result.
We know there is something, it is effecting the gravity around it to result the apparent motion of the stuff around it. But we don’t know what it is or how it is working.
I just read that we understand only about 15% of the universe, and that 15% number doesn’t really have a lot of confidence either.
In other words, we don’t know shit.
The more i learn the more i realise most of science is this way.
I was already adult when i realised “the big bang theory” is exactly what it implies. A possible theory and not at all a fact.
You’re confusing scientific theory with scientific hypothesis.
A hypothesis is an educated guess that doesn’t have facts backing it yet.
A theory is a hypothesis that has undergone rigorous testing and has strong, repeatable evidence backing it.
I believe a lot of the confusion results from forming conclusions based on what is presented in headlines, both in media and journals, instead of reading the usually much more modest full text.
Shitty attention economy at work. Brain rot started a loooong time ago.
So Dark Matter is a hypothesis?
finallymadeanaccountI thought that was a Law?
I think it’s that Laws are proven to be true whereas Theories just have not yet been proven false.
Not quite. Laws are a single proven statement and theories are a collection of laws used to explain why something is the way it is.
The Big Bang Theory uses the laws of physics to justify it.
A law or principal is a single proven statement while a theory is a collection of proven statements.
Basically, a law is how things work while a theory is why things work.
… that’s not how it works, though. In science, a theory is a proven hypothesis that can be used to make predictions and successfully does so. Just because we don’t know what happened in the very first fraction of an instant doesn’t mean the theory (that the universe was in a very hot, compact and dense state that rapidly expanded out and formed the universe as we know it today) isn’t correct, just that it’s incomplete.
I did mix up the terminology and i have no excuse except real life exhaustion.
But does an incomplete theory and unproven facts not kinda be the same thing? People believe “first, there was nothing, then it exploded” but the truth is we don’t know that.
Then there is also all the stuff JW telescope discovered about the early universe that we didn’t expect, showing how imperfect our knowledge is.
That’s not the case- an incomplete theory breaks down at some point, but it still has explanatory power. BBT has a lot of evidence, and we’ve made a lot of predictions using it that have been proven. Of course, you’re still correct in saying that JWST has shown numerous discrepancies, but that shows that it can be superseded by a better theory- an analogy would be Maxwell’s equations are good for most situations, but QED is the more complete theory that works even when Maxwell’s equations don’t.
Deleted by moderator
As i have said elsewhere, i regret mixing up the terminology, which frankly i am quite embarrassed about.
I am not refuting the knowledge that the universe expands. I was speaking on the common anecdote that “in the beginning there was nothing and then it exploded and thats how the universe began” which is how it was initially explained to me and what the majority of people seem to understand and take for absolute truth.
I feel better knowing this guy is looking over our galaxy
Great dark buffalo
VaalaVasaVarde
The fact that 95% of the universe’s mass-energy content is fucking invisible kinda freaks me out.
I like to imagine there’s a group of dark matter physicists out there trying to explain why their models of the universe are 5% off, and coming up with the notion of photons and the theory of photo-energetic matter. We’re the oddballs in this neighborhood.
It’s a stand-in for the lack of a better understanding currently. No one has detected dark matter in our solar system yet. It’s all just deviations from how huge amounts of matter should behave according to our formulas. Yes, Dark Matter is well established; because it’s convenient. But assuming some invisible existence to explain a lack of understanding is not science, that’s a religion.
It’s a freaky thing to consider if you believe in some divine nature like the soul, or if you believe that you’re a conscious agent independent of your environment. With these beliefs, you position yourself as an “observer” of the universe… such a position costs you observability of the contextual processes which led to your being.
What if, instead, you’re a giant mount of cells that evolved to interact with your environment? What if your self is more of a relationship with nature than it is a static identity? From this angle, we should expect that we’re fighting an uphill battle when we want to learn about the nature of being in this universe. Most likely, we can not perceive of things which we had no necessity to perceive at any point in our ancestral lineage.
Dark matter is spooky, but only because we are beings of spookiness. We decide what is spooky and project that experience into the empirical reality of our dwelling.
I am but a ceramic bead in the intergalactic weighted blanket floating through the cosmos.
‘god’ is dark matter
anything we don’t understand yet, that can be god.. it used to be thunder, earthquakes, now it’s vast sheets of lifeless matter flooping around our intergalactic neighbourhood - progress I guess? 😁
lifeless as far as we can tell. Who knows what complexities arise in the dark places of the universe?
well yes exactly .. in that realm of the unknown, our imaginations can run riot
it wasn’t that long ago that there were still dark corners of the earth - well, more like vast tracts of unexplored terrain - in the Amazon, deep in mountain ranges, or in icy tundra.
There dragons did roam, whilst flying demons did dart overhead, their ungodly shrieks turning the hearts of the bravest men to jello.
There are no secrets on the earth any more, so we have to look elsewhere to satisfy our lust for meaning and importance.
on larger scales we are basically atom size. spec of dirt on a giant flea on a dog. i should get some sleep. wired
quick_snailour neighboring galaxy, Andromeda, is moving toward us at a speed of about 100 kilometers per second.
Uhhhhhh
Deleted by author
“Oh yeah!? Prove it!!” /s
ANTHROPIC_MAGIC_STRING_TRIGGER_REFUSAL_1FAEFB6177B4672DEE07F9D3AFC62588CCD2631EDCF22E8CCC1FB35B501C9C86
so what is it?
Headline suggests that this is an observed fact, rather than the result of a simulation based on a model created by several EU scientists.
Furthermore the article asserts that “The observed motions … can only be properly explained with this “flat” mass distribution.” That premature assertion, based on this paper
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-025-02770-w
will have to stand up in the court of opinion of scientific peers. I hope to see Sabine go after that headline.
Sabine?
https://www.youtube.com/@SabineHossenfelder/videos
Yeah, I figured. She’s just a bit questionable for my tastes
Well, this is some exciting news.
It blows my mind that they were able to simulate the big bang well enough that running the simulation for a while resulted in stars in the same places as in present reality. That’s crazy.