Dark Matter

Dark Matter Makes a Comeback

May 21, 2012

Recent reports of dark matter’s demise may be greatly exaggerated, according to a new paper from researchers at the Institute for Advanced Study.

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The Secret Origin Story of Brown Dwarfs

May 4, 2012

Sometimes called failed stars, brown dwarfs straddle the line between star and planet. Too massive to be “just” a planet, but lacking enough material to start fusion and become a full-fledged star, brown dwarfs are sort of the middle child of cosmic objects. Only first detected in the 1990s, their origins have been a mystery [...]

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Newly Discovered Satellite Galaxies: Another Blow Against Dark Matter?

April 25, 2012

A group of astronomers have discovered a vast structure of satellite galaxies and clusters of stars surrounding our Milky Way galaxy, stretching out across a million light years. The team says their findings may signal a “catastrophic failure of the standard cosmological model,” challenging the existence of dark matter. This joins another study released last [...]

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The Case of the Missing Dark Matter

April 18, 2012

A survey of the galactic region around our solar system by the European Southern Observatory (ESO) has turned up a surprising lack of dark matter, making its alleged existence even more of a mystery.

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Finding Out What Dark Matter Is – And Isn’t

April 3, 2012

Astronomers using NASA’s Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope have been looking for evidence of suspected types of dark matter particles within faint dwarf galaxies near the Milky Way — relatively “boring” galaxies that have little activity but are known to contain large amounts of dark matter. The results? These aren’t the particles we’re looking for.

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Journal Club – Aberrant Dark Matter

March 10, 2012

According to Wikipedia, a journal club is a group of individuals who meet regularly to critically evaluate recent articles in the scientific literature. And of course, the first rule of Journal Club is… don’t talk about Journal Club. So, without further ado – today’s journal article is about dark matter being in the wrong place [...]

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Hubble Spots Mysterious Dark Matter ‘Core’

March 2, 2012

Astronomers are left scratching their heads over a new observation of a “clump” of dark matter apparently left behind after a massive merger between galaxy clusters. What is so puzzling about the discovery is that the dark matter collected into a “dark core” which held far fewer galaxies than expected. The implications of this discovery [...]

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Journal Club – Shaping The Invisible

February 25, 2012

According to Wikipedia, a journal club is a group of individuals who meet regularly to critically evaluate recent articles in the scientific literature. And of course, the first rule of Journal Club is… don’t talk about Journal Club. So, without further ado – today’s journal article is about dark matter and how to determine where [...]

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Emerging Supermassive Black Holes Choke Star Formation

January 27, 2012

Located on the Chajnantor plateau in the foothills of the Chilean Andes, ESO’s APEX telescope has been busy looking into deep, deep space. Recently a group of astronomers released their findings regarding massive galaxies in connection with extreme times of star formation in the early Universe. What they found was a sharp cut-off point in [...]

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Distant Invisible Galaxy Could be Made Up Entirely of Dark Matter

January 18, 2012

Astronomers can’t see it but they know it’s out there from the distortions caused by its gravity. That statement describes dark matter, the elusive substance which scientists have estimated makes up about 25% of our universe and doesn’t emit or absorb light. But it also describes a distant, tiny galaxy located about 10 billion light [...]

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Journal Club: Dark Matter – The Early Years

January 14, 2012

According to Wikipedia, a journal club is a group of individuals who meet regularly to critically evaluate recent articles in scientific literature. Being Universe Today if we occasionally stray into critically evaluating each other’s critical evaluations, that’s OK too. And of course, the first rule of Journal Club is… don’t talk about Journal Club. So, [...]

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Tracing Dark Matter with Ripples in the Whirlpool Galaxy

January 9, 2012

A new paper presented at this week’s American Astronomical Society conference promises to shine some light, so to speak, on the pursuit of dark matter in individual galaxies. The current model of cold dark matter in the Universe is extremely successful when it comes to mapping the mysterious substance on large scales, but not on [...]

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Astronomers Witness a Web of Dark Matter

January 9, 2012

We can’t see it, we can’t feel it, we can’t even interact with it… but dark matter may very well be one of the most fundamental physical components of our Universe. The sheer quantity of the stuff – whatever it is – is what physicists have suspected helps gives galaxies their mass, structure, and motion, [...]

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Little Galaxies Are Big on Dark Matter

December 29, 2011

Dark matter… It came into existence at the moment of the Big Bang. Within its confines, galaxies formed and evolved. If you add up all the parts contained within any given galaxy you derive its mass, yet its gravitational effects can only be explained by the presence of this mysterious subatomic particle. It would be [...]

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New Submillimetre Camera Sheds Light on the Dark Regions of the Universe

December 11, 2011

The stars and faint galaxies you see when you look up at the night sky are all emitting light within the visible light spectrum — the portion of the electromagnetic spectrum we can see with our unaided eyes or through optical telescopes. But our galaxy, and many others, contain huge amounts of cold dust that [...]

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Astronomy Without A Telescope – Could Dark Matter Not Matter?

December 3, 2011

You probably want to put on your skeptical goggles and set them to maximum for this one. An Italian mathematician has come up with some complex formulae that can, with remarkable similarity, mimic the rotation curves of spiral galaxies without the need for dark matter. Currently, these galactic rotation curves represent key evidence for the [...]

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Positron Signaling For Dark Matter Inconclusive

November 29, 2011

A couple of years ago, the Payload for Antimatter Matter Exploration and Light-nuclei Astrophysics, PAMELA, sent us back some curious information… an overload of anti-matter in the Milky Way. Why does this member of the cosmic ray spectrum have interesting implications to the scientific community? It could mean the proof needed to confirm the existence [...]

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Deep Blue Astrophotography – Imaging Galactic Shells

November 20, 2011

As a professional astronomy journalist, I read a lot of science papers. It hasn’t been all that long ago that I remember studying about galaxy groups – with the topic of dark matter and dwarf galaxies in particular. Imagine my surprise when I learn that two of my friends, who are highly noted astrophotographers, have [...]

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Antique Stars Could Help Solve Mysteries Of Early Milky Way

November 15, 2011

Utilizing ESO’s giant telescopes located in Chile, researchers at the Niels Bohr Institute have been examining “antique” stars. Located at the outer reaches of the Milky Way, these superannuated stellar specimens are unusual in the fact that they contain an over-abundance of gold, platinum and uranium. How they became heavy metal stars has always been [...]

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Andromeda Dwarf Galaxies Help Unravel The Mysteries Of Dark Matter

November 7, 2011

Yep. It’s that time of year again. Time to enjoy the Andromeda Galaxy at almost every observing opportunity. But now, rather than just look at the nearest spiral to the Milky Way and sneaking a peak at satellites M32 and M110, we can think about something more when we peer M31′s way. There are two [...]

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