The mystery of dark matter: This Week in Astronomy with Dave Eicher | Astronomy.com

Wish to surefire technique to win a Nobel Prize? All it’s a must to do is clear up this thriller.

Darkish matter is an invisible and mysterious type of matter that has monumental implications for the final word destiny of our universe.

Darkish matter was posited by Dutch astronomer Jan Oort within the 1930 when he studied star motions within the Solar’s neighborhood. As a result of the galaxy was not flying aside, he reasoned, there have to be extra matter within the disk to maintain the celebs from shifting away from the galaxy’s middle. Oort postulated that within the Solar’s neighborhood, thrice as a lot dark matter existed as vivid matter.

Additionally within the Thirties, American astronomer Fritz Zwicky deduced that a lot bigger clouds of dark matter exist within the Coma cluster of galaxies, about 300 million light-years from Earth. By wanting on the Doppler shifts of particular person galaxies within the cluster, Zwicky concluded that 10 instances extra mass than was detected by way of seen mild have to be current to maintain the galaxies gravitationally sure.

Then within the Nineteen Seventies, Vera Rubin, working with instrument-maker Kent Ford, started inspecting the luminous disks and halos of different galaxies and found that the outer areas had been shifting sooner than anticipated. This additionally implied that there was extra matter than was seen, and that this dark matter was widespread in galaxies.

One of many nice scientific mysteries of latest decade stays: What precisely is dark matter? Through the years, scientists have proposed many alternative potentialities. These embrace huge numbers of regular neutrinos; MACHOs (huge compact halo objects) comparable to brown dwarfs, neutron stars, and black holes; and WIMPs (weakly interacting huge particles) comparable to unique particles, huge neutrinos, and photinos.

In recent times, the main candidate has been the axion — a hypothetical particle with very small lots. Nevertheless, separate multimillion-dollar experiments based mostly on the College of Washington and the Institute for Fundamental Science in Daejeon, South Korea, haven’t but discovered such a particle.

No matter it’s, dark matter carries monumental implications for the construction and way forward for the cosmos, because it accounts for 26 % of the universe’s total mass-energy.

For extra on Vera Rubin’s groundbreaking work — and the widespread disappointment that she was by no means acknowledged with a Nobel Prize — check out this 2016 feature by Sarah Scoles.