Dark matter is shown in blue, ordinary matter is coloured pink "Striking evidence has been found for the enigmatic "stuff" called dark matter which makes up 23% of the Universe, yet is invisible to our eyes. The results come from astronomical observations of a titanic collision between two clusters of galaxies 5.7 billion light-years away. Astronomers detected the dark matter because it separated from the normal matter during the cosmic smash-up. The research team are to publish their findings in the Astrophysical Journal. They used the Hubble and Chandra space telescopes to study the object MACSJ0025.4-1222 - formed after an incredibly energetic collision between two large galaxy clusters. Each of these large clusters contains about a quadrillion times the mass of our Sun. A technique known as gravitational lensing was used to map the dark matter with Hubble. If an observer looks at a distant galaxy and some dark matter lies in between, the light from that galaxy gets distorted. It looks as if it is being seen through lots of little lenses. And each of these lenses represents a piece of dark matter. Astronomers used the Chandra X-ray telescope to map ordinary matter in the merging clusters, mostly in the form of hot gas, which glows brightly in X-rays. As the two clusters that formed MACSJ0025 merged at speeds of millions of kilometres per hour, hot gas in the two clusters collided and slowed down. However, the dark matter kept on g ...
Anytime
Dark matter is shown in blue, ordinary matter is coloured pink "Striking evidence has been found for the enigmatic "stuff" called dark matter which makes up 23% of the Universe, yet is invisible to our eyes. The results come from astronomical observations of a titanic collision between two clusters of galaxies 5.7 billion light-years away. Astronomers detected the dark matter because it separated from the normal matter during the cosmic smash-up. The research team are to publish their findings in the Astrophysical Journal. They used the Hubble and Chandra space telescopes to study the object MACSJ0025.4-1222 - formed after an incredibly energetic collision between two large galaxy clusters. Each of these large clusters contains about a quadrillion times the mass of our Sun. A technique known as gravitational lensing was used to map the dark matter with Hubble. If an observer looks at a distant galaxy and some dark matter lies in between, the light from that galaxy gets distorted. It looks as if it is being seen through lots of little lenses. And each of these lenses represents a piece of dark matter. Astronomers used the Chandra X-ray telescope to map ordinary matter in the merging clusters, mostly in the form of hot gas, which glows brightly in X-rays. As the two clusters that formed MACSJ0025 merged at speeds of millions of kilometres per hour, hot gas in the two clusters collided and slowed down. However, the dark matter kept on g ...