If you look up in the sky you might see stars, comets and even planets and all these things that were mentioned are made out of mater. The matter we know only makes up less than 5% of Space. So what about empty space, is it really empty? Actually it’s not. Empty space as we know it, isn’t really empty but created from entirely different materials, including Dark matter, Dark Energy and Antimatter.
- Dark Matter -
Dark Matter is a unique type of matter that is made of a particle that does not react with light as we know it. Vera Rubin, a 20th century astronomer, paved the way for modern research about Dark matter. When she was studying the velocity and rotations of galaxies to calculate the mass of them, she expected to see that the farther out the gas cloud was from the galaxy's center, the slower the acceleration. This was based on Johannes Kepley’s principle, in which he found that the farther a planet from a star, the slower it would orbit. But instead she found that the farther out from the galaxies, the faster the gas clouds were moving, which also meant the gravity was constant throughout the galaxy and not more powerful towards the center as you would see in a star or a black-hole(Check Out 6 Facts That Will Blow Your Mind About Black Holes to learn more about Black-holes). Her findings were odd because images of galaxies showed that there were clearly more interstellar objects near the center than farther away. This only meant that there was dark material near the edges of galaxies contributing to the mass of the galaxies which became known as Dark Matter. Scientists still don’t know exactly what Dark Matter is, But the closest guess that we have are subatomic particles from quantum physics. One such particle is an Axion. An Axion has very similar characteristics to those seen in Dark Matter, they have mass, they also do not emit much light and another bizarre property that Axions have is that they do not interact with normal matter, they would pass right through it. If Dark Matter were really Axions then this property would help us see it. During galactic collisions, the galaxies themselves would pass through each other but the gas clouds would hit right at each other and become really hot. The gas clouds would also emit light and X-rays, which could be perceived by our telescopes. By viewing the image below you can see the gas cluster in red, and the Axions as seen below in violet have passed through and can be clearly seen. We have only hit the surface on Dark Matter and we still have a lot of research and discovery until we can understand Dark Matter.
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