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Dark matter it represents approximately 85% of the matter in the Universe. However, dark matter is famous for being elusive and cannot be directly experienced. Instead, its presence is inferred through its gravitational pull on visible matter in space.
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Now, observations of several massive galaxy clusters made by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile have revealed a mysterious ingredient missing from current theories of dark matter. Astronomers have discovered that small-scale concentrations of dark matter in clusters produce measurements of how gravity distorts space, also called gravitational lensing effects, that are 10 times stronger than previously expected.
“Clusters of galaxies are ideal laboratories for understanding whether computer simulations of the universe reliably reproduce what we can infer about dark matter and its interaction with light matter,” said Massimo Meneghetti of the Institute’s Astrophysics and Space Sciences Observatory. National Institute of Astrophysics (INAF). from Bologna in Italy, lead author of the study.
“We have done a lot of careful testing comparing the simulations and the data in this study, and our finding of the mismatch persists,” Meneghetti continued. “One possible source of this discrepancy is that we may be missing some key physics in the simulations.”
“There is a feature of the real universe that we are simply not capturing in our current theoretical models. This could indicate a gap in our current understanding of the nature of dark matter and its properties, as these exquisite data have allowed us to probe the distribution details. of dark matter on the smallest scales, “added Priyamvada Natarajan of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, one of the team’s leading theorists.
The Hubble images, combined with the spectra from the VLT, helped the team produce an accurate, high-fidelity map of dark matter that identified dozens of background galaxies. Better still, by calculating the lens distortions, the researchers were able to figure out the amount and distribution of dark matter. The teams paper is published in the magazine Sciences.
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