At www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/07/dark-matter-sun/ … this article and the web site were noted by member Gary Gilligan and forwarded to In the News at news [at] sis-group [dot] org and other members are invited to send details of web sites and papers, and newspaper reports, that they think might interest other members. It is basically an online version of Monitor and the idea is to inform members of new scientific information within the remit of SIS – history and chronology for example, archaeological discoveries, physics, biology, geology, catastrophism, electro-magnetism etc. Currently, there is an overload on Climate Change and on this particular subject, enough is enough – so avoid that one.
Dark matter, it is suggested, may play an important role on the Sun. This enigmatic material, or non-material, is a mysterious substance that some claim makes up 83 per cent of the matter of the universe – but strangely, it does not appear to interact with electro-magnetic forces. Others, of course, laugh at the idea of dark matter. It is invisible to the human eye and telescopes but astrophysicists claim they know it is there because of its gravitational effect on normal matter. Dark matter, the theory contends, keeps galaxies spinning quickly without flying apart. In a paper in Physical Review Letters July 2nd, it is suggested the Sun might harbour dark matter on the basis it is possible that the Sun, over the last 5 billion years, has swept up large amounts of dark matter – and this might explain anomalies at the surface of the Sun. These observations have shown there is a lot of heat at the surface of the Sun – and it is unclear why this should be so. The heat, it is thought, or according to the simulation model, is transported to the surface from the interior – at a rate much higher than the model allows, or perceives. Dark matter particles, it is suggested, interact only with each other and this might explain the extra heat – by transporting it from the interior to the surface more efficiently. However, for the mathematical calculations and the theory to have traction there must be some evidence of dark matter found in the neutrino flux given off by the Sun. This is the next stage of the development of what is perhaps a prop to the consensus view of how the Sun works.