Scientists 'see' dark matter web for first time
We can鈥檛 see it, we can鈥檛 feel it, we can鈥檛 even聽interact聽with it鈥� but聽may very well be one of the most fundamental physical components of our Universe. The sheer quantity of the stuff 鈥撀�whatever聽it is 鈥� is what physicists have suspected helps gives galaxies their mass, structure, and motion, and provides the 鈥済lue鈥� that connects clusters of galaxies together in vast networks of cosmic webs.
Now, for the first time, this dark matter web has been directly observed.
An international team of astronomers, led by Dr. Catherine Heymans of the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, and Associate Professor Ludovic Van Waerbeke of the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada, used data from the聽聽Legacy Survey to map images of about 10 million galaxies and study how their light was bent by gravitational lensing caused by intervening dark matter.
The images were gathered over a period of five years using CFHT鈥檚 1脳1-degree-field, 340-megapixel MegaCam. The galaxies observed in the survey are up to 6 billion light-years away鈥� meaning their observed light was emitted when the Universe was only a little over half its present age.
The amount of distortion of the galaxies鈥� light provided the team with a visual map of a dark matter 鈥渨eb鈥� spanning a billion light-years across.
鈥淚t is fascinating to be able to 鈥榮ee鈥� the dark matter using space-time distortion,鈥� said聽Van Waerbeke.听鈥滻t gives us privileged access to this mysterious mass in the Universe which cannot be observed otherwise. Knowing how dark matter is distributed is the very first step towards understanding its nature and how it fits within our current knowledge of physics.鈥�
This is one giant leap toward unraveling the mystery of this massive-yet-invisible substance that pervades the Universe.
鈥淲e hope that by mapping more dark matter than has been studied before, we are a step closer to understanding this material and its relationship with the galaxies in our Universe,鈥� Dr. Heymans said.
The results were presented today at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Austin, Texas.听
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Jason Major聽is a graphic artist from Rhode Island now living and working in Dallas, Texas. He writes about astronomy and space exploration on his blog聽, here on Universe Today and also on Discovery News.
