Nov 19, 2014 11:43 PM
(This post was last modified: Nov 20, 2014 12:17 AM by Magical Realist.)
"Elusive dark matter around clusters of galaxies often clumps into cigar shapes, new observations show.
The discovery could help scientists finally understand what makes up dark matter, which is the mystifying stuff thought to exist invisibly all around us. Dark matter, which could be more than five times more abundant than visible matter, is only detectable through its gravitational pull on regular material.
According to the new observations, the dark matter around many galaxy clusters is a flattened, cigar-like shape, rather than a rounded sphere.
"There are clear theoretical predictions that we expect dark mater haloes to be flattened like this," said study co-author Graham P. Smith of the U.K.'s University of Birmingham. "It?s a very beautiful, very clean and direct measurement of that."====http://www.space.com/8289-cosmic-dark-ma...hapes.html
Guess this makes our universe one vast humidor.
The discovery could help scientists finally understand what makes up dark matter, which is the mystifying stuff thought to exist invisibly all around us. Dark matter, which could be more than five times more abundant than visible matter, is only detectable through its gravitational pull on regular material.
According to the new observations, the dark matter around many galaxy clusters is a flattened, cigar-like shape, rather than a rounded sphere.
"There are clear theoretical predictions that we expect dark mater haloes to be flattened like this," said study co-author Graham P. Smith of the U.K.'s University of Birmingham. "It?s a very beautiful, very clean and direct measurement of that."====http://www.space.com/8289-cosmic-dark-ma...hapes.html
Guess this makes our universe one vast humidor.