Dark matter is the invisible ‘web’ that keeps the galaxies together and a recent study produced an enormous map of the distribution of dark matter in our Universe.
The international collaboration, known as the Dark Energy Survey (DES), will present its preliminary findings on Tuesday at a meeting of the American Physical Society and publish them on the Arxiv preprint server, according to BBC.
The study involved more than 300 scientists from six countries and used images taken by one of the best digital cameras in the world: a 570-megapixel gadget mounted on the Victor Blanco telescope at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory, high in the Chilean Andes.
The researchers photographed about two million galaxies in a large patch of southern sky and pinpointed small distortions in the shapes of the most distant galaxies in order to map the mass of dark matter in the foreground, as stated in the journal Nature.
[quote text_size=”small” author=”– Sarah Bridle” author_title=”Astrophysics professor at the University of Manchester and co-chair of the DES weak lensing group, which produced the map.”]
Our goal all this time has been to see the invisible – to see dark matter. To be able to look at a map and say, ‘That part of the sky’s got more dark matter in it, that bit’s empty,’ is the dream that we’ve had all this time.
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The survey began more than 2 years ago and it will run for another three years. The preliminary map was made using data from the camera’s very first images. This is so far the largest contiguous dark matter map that’s been made.
Last month, Immortal News covered a story about a study discovering first dwarf galaxy discovered in decade, published in the Astrophysical Journal.
What do you think about dark matter and how recent study will help us understand the structure of the univrese?
