The Big Three for 2006

The end of the year will soon be here which means that we will soon be deluged by television "specials" that will inform us as to which over-paid neurotic/narcissistic actor or actress that we should keep an eye on in the coming year or some other nonsense that is better appreciated while reading the National Enquirer or People Magazine.

Fortunately, your humble correspondent has scoured the year's reports and press releases originating from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and their "partner" organizations such as the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). I've selected the following 3 events or missions that, in my personal opinion, will have the greatest impact on the near- and far-term developments for the study of how planets form, how life arises, and what can we expect when we begin to search for life beyond the Earth.

Coming in at First Place was the September 06, 2006 joint announcement by NASA, the Hubble Center and the Chandra X-ray Center, both of Cambridge, MA concerning the first confirmed detection of "dark matter."

Using data from the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) and the Chandra X-ray Telescope scientists were able to observe the aftermath of a collision involving 2 galaxy clusters (a cluster means that there are many galaxies held together by their gravitational forces interacting with each other).

In galaxy clusters the "normal" matter is primarily in the form of hot gases and stars. The mass of the hot gases between the galaxies is much greater than the mass of the stars in all of the galaxies. This normal matter is bound in the cluster by the gravity of an even greater mass of dark matter. Without dark matter, which is invisible and can only be detected through its gravity, the fast-moving galaxies and the hot gas would quickly fly apart.