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Since it doesn't interact with light or other electromagnetic radiation, and barely if at all with normal matter except through gravity, it's not surprising that it's proven excruciatingly hard to detect. A long series of increasingly sensitive experiments have narrowed the range of possible targets, but so far have failed to find actual dark matter particles.
Now, researchers at the University of Waterloo, in Ontario, Canada, have confirmed one of the key predictions of how dark matter should act by imaging for the first time strands or bridges of dark matter linking neighboring galaxies.
Dark matter filaments bridge the space between galaxies in this false colour map. The locations of bright galaxies are shown by the white regions and the presence of a dark matter filament bridging the galaxies is shown in red. Credit: S. Epps & M. Hudson / University of Waterloo
Astronomer Michael Hudson and graduate student Seth Epps detected the dark matter bridges through the gravitational lensing effect they had on the light coming from even-more-distant galaxies. The image above combines the observations of 23,000 galaxy pairs, which allowed the researchers to detect the dark matter filaments with a high degree of statistical certainty.
“For decades, researchers have been predicting the existence of dark-matter filaments between galaxies that act like a web-like superstructure connecting galaxies together,” said Hudson. “This image moves us beyond predictions to something we can see and measure.”
Their work proves the prediction that rather than isolated "island universes," galaxies and even larger galaxy clusters are like beads of condensation on an invisible cosmic web of dark matter.
Beads of water on a spider's web
https://goo.gl/images/RJO6Xe
You can find the original paper here.
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