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LadyAstronomer
Bookworm
Reged: 11/15/07
Posts: 2951
Loc: Library of Congress
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"In previous simulations, this region came out smooth, but now we have enough detail to see clumps of dark matter."
Press Release Here: Study shows clumps and streams of dark matter in inner regions of the Milky Way
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"I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me." -- Sir Isaac Newton
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llanitedave
Humble Megalomaniac
Reged: 09/26/05
Posts: 10474
Loc: Amargosa Valley, NV, USA
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Just to clarify, this isn't an announcement that such structures have actually been observed, only a prediction of what to look for when we get the instruments capable of observing them, assuming the validity of a particular model.
Still, it's intriguing. On one hand, it provides a testable prediction of specific potential observations. On the other hand, despite the massive number crunching required to run the simulation, it's operation seems to be extremely simple. It just takes a very large number of gravitating particles (but no other form of interaction) and let's them interact over time. Anybody can do the same experiment on their home PC, although they can't approach anywhere near the number of particles involved or the timescales.
Essentially, it's the same program that would model the stars in a globular cluster or the orbits of planets, without, I suppose, large differences between the masses of the objects.
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"S.O.E." (Sauron's Other Eye) 16" Royce conical mirror: A permanent work in progress.
10" Homebuilt dob, old Coulter mirror
Next Project: The "Eye of Sauron" Observatory!
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