Dark Matter Simulation Question

[physicsandrea]

Hello! I'm a postdoctoral astrophysics researcher looking for dark matter using the Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope.

For an upcoming talk I'm giving I would like to use Universe Sandbox 2 to sell a point I'm making about dark matter holding galaxies together. I'd like to run a simulation of a galaxy with dark matter, and then suddenly delete the dark matter from the system (while the sim is running), and see the system lose its structure.

Right now you can create a system with dark matter enabled and change the initial value of the dark matter particles, but there doesn't seem to be a way to delete existing dark matter from a running simulation (like you can with deleting the star from a solar system or the black hole from a galaxy).

Is what I'm trying to do currently possible in US2 or has it not been added yet?

(I've emailed/tweeted the US2 team about this as well; I'll edit this post if they answer. Wanted to ask the community, too)

Thanks!

[physicsandrea]

The US2 team replied to my tweet and added this feature! If you wanted to see what happens, start a galaxy simulation with Dark Matter and go into Powers -> More -> Delete Dark Matter.

One of the strongest motivations for Dark Matter is that galaxies do not have enough luminous (non-dark) matter to stay together. It is really cool to see the whole thing fall apart when you delete the dark matter clusters suddenly during the simulation.

I will add the lecture I'm giving using this simulation to this post when I run it in November. It'll be public so you'll be able to view it online!

Thanks again to the team!

[gabriel.dac]

Oh nice! I'll be waiting to see that

[DiamondMiner10]

The US2 team replied to my tweet and added this feature! If you wanted to see what happens, start a galaxy simulation with Dark Matter and go into Powers -> More -> Delete Dark Matter.

One of the strongest motivations for Dark Matter is that galaxies do not have enough luminous (non-dark) matter to stay together. It is really cool to see the whole thing fall apart when you delete the dark matter clusters suddenly during the simulation.

I will add the lecture I'm giving using this simulation to this post when I run it in November. It'll be public so you'll be able to view it online!

Thanks again to the team!

Good luck on your speech!

[Dan Dixon]

We'll aim to improve the look of the galaxies before November. It's on our list of things to do after we launch on Steam Early Access.

[Magnetarhyper4436]

What is Dark Matter? Is it some kind of another type of matter? Is it something that keeps our galaxy from ripping apart? Or is it something from a theoretical parallel universe that interacts with our?

[Physics_Hacker]

What is Dark Matter? Is it some kind of another type of matter? Is it something that keeps our galaxy from ripping apart? Or is it something from a theoretical parallel universe that interacts with our?

Dark matter is matter that has gravitational influence on seen matter, and keeps the outer stars in our galaxy from flying away, but has no effect on normal matter in any other way except gravitationally, and possibly a bit through the Weak Nuclear Force. The reason it is called "Dark" is simply that we cannot see it.

[DiamondMiner10]

What is Dark Matter? Is it some kind of another type of matter? Is it something that keeps our galaxy from ripping apart? Or is it something from a theoretical parallel universe that interacts with our?

We can not see it in any way, but we know where it is because we can detect it through gravity and the way it interacts with normal matter. It is not in another universe since it has been detected in our universe.