Here’s How to Weigh Gigantic Filaments of Dark Matter
How do you weigh one of the largest objects in the entire universe? Very carefully, according to new research.
Dark Matter Has a Firm Grip on These Galaxies
The elliptical galaxy NGC 1270 lies about 240 million light-years away. But it’s not alone. It’s part of the Perseus Cluster (Abell 426), the brightest X-ray object in the sky and one of the most massive objects in the Universe. NGC 1270 plays a starring role in a new image from the Gemini North telescope. …
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Dark Matter Could a Have Slight Interaction With Regular Matter
Dark matter seems to be an invisible particle that only interacts with regular matter (or itself) through gravity. But in a new study, based on data gathered by Hubble, researchers think they’ve found evidence of interactions with regular matter beyond just gravity. They recorded the structure of a low-mass galaxy, measured the concentrations of dark matter, and then compared that to simulations where dark matter only interacts through gravity and found a discrepancy.
Largest Dark Matter Detector is Narrowing Down Dark Matter Candidate
In 2012, two previous dark matter detection experiments—the Large Underground Xenon (LUX) and ZonEd Proportional scintillation in Liquid Noble gases (ZEPLIN)—came together to form the LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ) experiment. Since it commenced operations, this collaboration has conducted the most sensitive search ever mounted for Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs) – one of the leading Dark Matter …
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Dark Matter Could Have Driven the Growth of Early Supermassive Black Holes
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) keeps finding supermassive black holes (SMBH) in the early Universe. They’re in active galactic nuclei seen only 500,000 years after the Big Bang. This was long before astronomers thought they could exist. What’s going on?
New Limits on Dark Matter
As it’s name suggests, dark matter is dark! That means it’s largely invisible to us and only detectable through its interaction with gravity. One of the leading theories to explain the stuff that makes up the majority of the matter in the Universe are WIMPs, Weakly Interacting Massive Particles. They are just theories though and …
Giant Collision Decouples Dark Matter from Regular Matter
Dark matter is a mysterious and captivating subject. It’s a strange concept and we don’t really have a handle on what it actually is. One of the strongest pieces of evidence that dark matter is a particle comes from cosmic collisions. These collisions chiefly occur when clusters of galaxies interact such as the famous Bullet …
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Pulsars are the Ideal Probes for Dark Matter
Pulsars are the remnants of the explosion of massive stars at the end of their lives. The event is known as a supernova and as they rapidly spin they sweep a high energy beam across the cosmos much like a lighthouse. The alignment of some pulsar beams mean they sweep across Earth predictably and with …
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Mapping the Stars in a Dwarf Galaxy to Reveal its Dark Matter
Dark matter is curious stuff! As the name suggests, it’s dark making it notoriously difficult to study. Although it’s is invisible, it influences stars in a galaxy through gravity. Now, a team of astronomers have used the Hubble Space Telescope to chart the movements of stars within the Draco dwarf galaxy to detect the subtle …
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Mapping the Milky Way’s Dark Matter Halo
Anytime astronomers talk of mapping the Milky Way I am always reminded how tricky the study of the Universe can be. After all, we live inside the Milky Way and working out what it looks like or mapping it from the inside is not the easiest of missions. It’s one thing to map the visible …