New Findings on Universe's Dark Matter Confound Scientists

Research published this week revealed an unexpected discrepancy between observations of dark matter concentrations.

By Reuters | Updated: 12 September 2020 11:03 IST

New Findings on Universe's Dark Matter Confound Scientists

Photo Credit: Yale.edu

Astrophysicist says assumption about nature of dark matter may be fundamental incorrect

Highlights

New observations conflicting with current understanding of dark matter
Theoretical computer simulations of dark matter may be incorrect
Dark matter is the invisible glue that holds stars together

Dark matter, mysterious invisible stuff that makes up most of the mass of galaxies including our own Milky Way, is confounding scientists again, with new observations of distant galaxies conflicting with the current understanding of its nature.

Research published this week revealed an unexpected discrepancy between observations of dark matter concentrations in three massive clusters of galaxies encompassing trillions of stars and theoretical computer simulations of how dark matter should be distributed.

"Either there is a missing ingredient in the simulations or we have made a fundamental incorrect assumption about the nature of dark matter," Yale University astrophysicist Priyamvada Natarajan, a co-author of the study published in the journal Science, said on Friday.

Dark matter is the invisible glue that holds stars together inside a galaxy. It also creates an invisible scaffold that enables galaxies to form clusters. But it has very peculiar properties. It does not emit, absorb or reflect light and does not interact with any known particles.

The bulk of the matter in the universe, about 96 percent, is thought to be dark matter, with ordinary matter - the visible stuff that makes up stars, planets and people - a mere 4 percent.

Dark matter's presence is known only through its gravitational pull on visible matter in space. It differs from the similarly enigmatic and unseen dark energy, which is considered a property of space and is driving the universe's accelerated expansion. Dark energy is repulsive. Dark matter attracts through gravity.

The new study involved observations from the Hubble Space Telescope and the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope in Chile.

When the light from distant sources like faraway galaxies travels through matter such as another galaxy or a cluster of them, the light is deflected and bends - a phenomenon called "gravitational lensing," said astrophysicist and study lead author Massimo Meneghetti of the Observatory of Astrophysics and Space Science in Bologna and National Institute for Astrophysics in Italy.

The new observations showed that gravitational lensing effects produced by galaxies residing inside the huge galaxy clusters were far stronger than current dark matter theory envisioned, suggesting an unexpectedly large concentration of dark matter in these galaxies.

"This is quite surprising," Meneghetti said.

Is this the end of the Samsung Galaxy Note series as we know it? We discussed this on Orbital, our weekly technology podcast, which you can subscribe to via Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, or RSS, download the episode, or just hit the play button below.

Affiliate links may be automatically generated - see our ethics statement for details.

Comments

For the latest tech news and reviews, follow Gadgets 360 on X, Facebook, WhatsApp, Threads and Google News. For the latest videos on gadgets and tech, subscribe to our YouTube channel. If you want to know everything about top influencers, follow our in-house Who'sThat360 on Instagram and YouTube.