Sunday, December 8, 2024

Hubble Telescope tracks a dwarf galaxy’s stars to map out dark matter

NASAHubble Telescope tracks a dwarf galaxy's stars to map out dark matter



The Hubble Space Telescope has shown that dark matter is concentrated within the core of a nearby dwarf galaxy, a finding that rushes to the rescue of the Standard Model of cosmology. This model basically predicts dark matter to be “cold,” but recent findings have started to hint at the substance being “warm.” These new observations, however, are on the Standard Model’s side.

Dark matter is the invisible substance purported to make up 85% of the mass of the universe, but nobody knows what dark matter actually is, or exactly how it behaves. Our best idea is that it is “cold,” which, in other words, means it is predicted to consist of a low-energy particle that’s not zipping about hither and thither, but is rather slow-moving and capable of clumping together to form huge haloes inside which galaxies grow. The concept of cold dark matter (CDM) and its influence on structure formation in the universe is a critical part of our current Standard Model of cosmology. That part is known as Lambda–CDM (the lambda refers to dark energy).

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