5 Facts About The Search For Dark Matter
Tuesday, September 22, 2015 - 08:12
in Astronomy & Space
Visualization of Dark Matter Photograph by Jonathon Kambouris; Prop Styling by Jill Edwards for Halley Resources It makes up a quarter of the universe. Without it, galaxies would fall apart, and stars would spin off into space. Dark matter is five times more abundant than normal matter (the stuff that makes up trees and stars and us), yet scientists can’t see it or figure out what it is. The one thing they can say for sure: They’re getting closer to an answer. 1: Astronomers in the 1930s realized that if they added up all the visible matter in a galaxy cluster, the combined gravity would not be enough to hold everything together. There had to be something else there—and there had to be a lot of it. Scientists initially referred to it as...