Mysteries of the Universe – Dark Matter – ITechnical World

 Mysteries of the Universe – Dark Matter – Is the mystery being solved? Hubble Detects Smallest Known Dark Matter Clusters. Before getting into the subject, we will give detailed information about dark matter. Then we will talk about some important observations made by the Hubble Space Telescope on dark matter. Enjoyable reading…

Man is the only being that can question. We have been observing nature and asking questions for thousands of years. The questions we ask lead us to answers, and those answers lead us to other questions.

You can think of this as doing a "puzzle". Every right piece we put in place takes us one step forward.

Will we ever be able to complete this puzzle and find the "Theory of Everything"? Or is this a puzzle with an infinite number of pieces? I don't know about this yet, we don't know.

But one thing I know is that there are so many questions that need to be answered.

What is dark matter?

What is dark energy?

Or what makes Supermassive Black Holes so huge? Etc..

We will examine such questions in our “Mysteries of the Universe” series. We will review what we know, the developments we have achieved, and the theories we have produced for these questions. Now let's get back to our main topic.

What is Dark Matter?

Approximately 5% of the universe consists of matter. What we call matter; atoms, trees, planets , galaxies… In short, most everything we can think of is made up of matter.

Approximately 25% of the universe consists of dark matter. So where is the dark matter, which is approximately 5 times more abundant than normal matter in the universe?

Why can't we see this item?

Because: Dark matter does not interact with electromagnetic waves (gamma rays…light…radio waves).

That's why we can't observe dark matter. Would you believe it if someone told you "ghosts are real"?

My personal answer to this question would be "I don't believe it". But we believe in "Dark matter", which is invisible.

Because: We can feel their existence through other substances.

Ghost Hunt

General Relativity Theory defines Gravity as the bending of space-time by the mass and energy within itself. Only with this information, we can deduce that Mercury, the first planet of our solar system, should rotate around the Sun shorter than Neptune.

In 1933, Swiss astronomer Fritz Zwicky observed that this was not the case for every star system. According to observations, the outermost planet and the innermost planet of some star systems were rotating at almost the same speed.

Under normal circumstances, the outermost planet should be thrown into space due to centrifugal force, but dark matter prevents this. That's why we also call dark matter " cosmic glue ".

"Ghost Hunt", which started with Fritz Zwicky, still continues today. Thanks to developing technology and new observation techniques, we are getting one step closer to solving this mystery every day.

Could Einstein Be Wrong?

Thanks to the developed methods, we can now calculate the ratio of the amount of dark matter to the amount of normal matter more precisely.

One of the methods that allows us to measure this is that galaxy clusters bend space-time and create a lens effect due to the excessive amount of mass they have.

Therefore, galaxies in the background can be viewed enlarged or in several places at the same time. In order to explain this situation in accordance with the laws of physics we have, there must be more matter than observed in galaxies. Or “General Relativity” is an incomplete theory.

For this reason, while theoretical physicists are trying to improve General Relativity, particle physicists are also looking for particles that could be dark matter particles. Recently, NASA announced that the Hubble Space Telescope has made some important observations on dark matter.

Hubble Detects Smallest Known Dark Matter Clusters

Is the Dark Matter Mystery Solved?

Using a new observation technique, astronomers have detected dark matter clusters around some galaxies through the Hubble Space Telescope. The important point here: It is the discovery that dark matter forms much smaller clusters than previously known.

So how did they do this?

Researchers looked for small concentrations of dark matter in the Hubble data by measuring how light from quasars was affected as it traveled through space. This observation confirmed one of the fundamental predictions of the "cold dark matter" theory, which is widely accepted in the physics world.

According to this theory: All galaxies are settled and buried in clouds of dark matter. At the same time, dark matter clusters are (at maximum) the size of an airplane and consist of “cold” particles. (In this context, “cold” refers to the speed of the particles.)

"Dark matter is colder than we know on smaller scales, and although astronomers have made some observations on dark matter before, this observation is the strongest evidence obtained so far," said Anna Nierenberg, Leader of NASA's Hubble Research.

However, the type of particles that make up dark matter is still a mystery. Simon Birrer said,

“There is still no direct evidence for the existence of dark matter particles from experiments carried out in laboratories.However, we hope to find more evidence by making clearer observations as the James Webb Space Telescope is put into orbit,” he said.