An Extra Positron Problem
Apr 06
Astrolunch is a weekly talk here at the Department of Physics and Astronomy where speakers give talks on a topic outside of their usual expertise. This week's Astrolunch talk was by Lucy Wilcock, a PhD student studying star formation here at Cardiff University. She overveiwed a recent paper in Nature, covering some results from PAMeLA and the problem with having too many positrons. The...
5 Scientific Ideas That Could Just Be Bullsh*t
Nov 07
Here are some things that get talked about a lot as fact, but really are just good theories. When verified by direct observation, most of these will be considered a nobel-prize winning, ground-breaking new frontier in physics. Until then, they are just good ideas, waiting to be verified.
Blowing Smoke
May 16
A while ago I posted about the Bullet Cluster, and an image which seems to reveal the dark matter within it. Now a new image from Hubble seems to do the same thing for the galaxy cluster CL0024+17. Now I am personally rather sceptical about the validity of images such as these, although I feel sure that we will see many more of them in the coming years. 'Showing' dark matter sounds to me like...
Ghost in the Machine
Apr 24
The image above shows the Bullet Cluster. Also known as 1E 0657-56, this is a pair of clusters of galaxies some 3.4 billion light years away. As Jon Davies told us in yesterday's Astrolunch meeting however: you should be careful about believing everything you see. This image is not a regular photograph by any means. You can see the galaxies scattered about with an orange glow. This much...
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