dark matter

A new analysis of more than 1,500 supernovae has put fresh precision on measurements of the dark matter and dark energy that permeate our universe.According to the research, about two-thirds of the cosmos (66.2%) is made up of dark energy, and the remaining third (33.8%) is made up of matter. Almost all matter is what’s called “dark,” meaning we can’t actually see it—we only know it’s there because we can measure its gravitational effects. The regular matter we can touch and see makes up less than 5% of the universe. The…

In particular, Antypas’ team uses their experiment to search for a class of dark matter known as ultralight dark matter. At its heaviest, an ultralight dark matter particle is still about a trillion times lighter than an electron. According to quantum mechanics, all matter has particle-like and wave-like qualities, with larger objects typically harboring more particle-like qualities and smaller ones more wave-like qualities. ​​”When people talk about ultralight dark matter, what they mean is that the dark matter is more…

Researchers just studied the lensing of the oldest light we can see and discovered the oldest dark matter yet observed, surrounding 12-billion-year-old galaxies.They spotted this dark matter by looking at how some galaxies warp the light of the cosmic microwave background, the earliest detectable radiation from just after the Big Bang, which kicked off the universe as we know it. The team’s research is published in Physical Review Letters.“Most researchers use source galaxies to measure dark matter distribution from the…

American Space Agency NASA has selected Elon Musk's Space Exploration Technologies Corporation (SpaceX) to launch their new Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, from California which will explore dark matter and other subjects, according to a release by the agency on Wednesday.The launch has been tentatively set for October 2026, using SpaceX's Falcon Heavy Rocket as the launch vehicle from Launch Complex 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Centre.The total cost of launch is estimated to be roughly $255 million, which includes the…

The LZ central detector in the clean room at Sanford Underground Research Facility. Photo: Matthew Kapust, Sanford Underground Research FacilityThe LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ) experiment team has announced the results from its first scientific run today; the experiment is the world’s most sensitive dark matter detector, and though it did not find any dark matter in this first round, the team confirmed that the experiment is working as expected.The LZ experiment detector is made up nested tanks of liquid xenon, each 1.5 meters tall…

IceCube is an example of how big science, and particularly particle physics, now often works on generational time scales. Getting from the idea of IceCube to actually drilling its neutrino sensors into a cubic kilometer of Antarctic ice to pinpointing a high-energy neutrino source took 30 years. In that time, key personnel retired, passed away, or moved on to projects offering more instant gratification. Whitehorn’s experience is the exception, not the rule—many scientists have devoted years, decades, or even entire…

An international group of astronomers has revived an alternative gravity theory, known as Milgromian Dynamics or MOND. A majority of astronomers agree that there's something out there, called a 'dark matter', which causes spiral galaxies to rotate faster than they should. If we follow the rules of physics, galaxies rotate so quickly that they should fly apart. MOND, a controversial alternative to Albert Einstein's General Relativity that requires dark matter to hold galaxies together, does not require dark matter. As the…

Scientists at Europe's physics research centre will this week fire up the 27 kilometer-long Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the machine that found the Higgs boson particle, after a shutdown for maintenance and upgrades was prolonged by COVID-19 delays.Restarting the collider is a complex procedure, and researchers at the CERN centre have champagne on hand if all goes well, ready to join a row of bottles in the control room celebrating landmarks including the discovery of the elusive subatomic particle a decade ago."It's not…