Mystery of Missing Galaxies

Small fluctuations in gravity measurements of gas at the edge of our own galaxy, lead scientists to suspect the existence of a previously unnoticed satellite galaxy near the Milky Way. This is written up in National Geeographic News and an official publication of the research is scheduled for the Astrophysical Journal.

This much smaller galaxy, may be invisible because of dark matter, and because it's non dark matter stars are quite dim, and it exists in a galactic plane hard for us to see, and because of clouds, gases, etc obscuring the penetration of telescopes: all reasons our close neighbor has not yet been noticed.  

The confirmation of this galaxy would be exciting since models of galactic formation in the aftermath of the big bang  predict a galaxy like ours should have many of these satellites, and yet, no one has found nearly enough to satisfy the mathematical calculations scientists are relying on. 

If the dwarf galaxy Dr. Chakrabarti is predicting is found:it will provide verification of scientists' predictions on the distribution of matter in the universe. This "missing satellite problem" she said, "is a fundamental problem in cosmology."  Should the galaxy NOT be found,  one alternative suggests  " there's some other oddity out there throwing off the calculations—perhaps an unexpected distribution pattern of the halo of dark matter thought to surround the Milky Way."

Culture at the Wall Street Journal

The Wall Street Journal, of December 29, 2010, has a book review on their opinion page. The review by Sam Sacks, discusses Heinrich Boll (1917-1985) and the reissue of some of Boll's novels: The Clown, 1963 and The Safety Net (1979).  Boll's theme according to Sacks, is that "German national pride is tainted by association with Nazism." This fact, that notice is taken of German citizens and their relation to nazism, 65 years after the war ended, and now noticed in the pages of the Wall Street Journal, noticed very mildly and with little inspiration or analysis, this fact, makes me wonder what kind of coverage this periodical gave to stories about the participation by industrialists during the last war. This fact, I assure you, belongs in a blog about weird news.

Why are poor people trying to help bankers avoid governmental restraint

Francis Fukuyama, a noted historian, raises the question of how accurate it is to consider America a plutocracy (rule of the wealthy) and whether the undeniable greater access to governmental power the wealthy have, is sufficient to explain the situation wherein many of the people hurt by the banking collapse in 2008, in fact seem to be supporting programs and policies that now benefit the banks and hurt themselves. That is his topic in an article in the American Interest, a resource I only just became familiar with, and which now I highly recommend. The ending is a bit disappointing in that he is forced to assess the situation as puzzling. It is still an enormous help to have someone outline the problems so nicely AND, his assessment of the role of economists themselves in these events is something I had not thought of at all. Fukuyama's article is entitle"Left Out," a multiple layered pun.