NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has released a new image that shows the dark cobwebs of Abell 611, as reported by Digital Trends. The galaxy is 3.2 billion light-years away, and the image shows hundreds of galaxies bound together by gravity into a massive structure.
(Photo : Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
CAPE CANAVERAL, FL - MAY 22: The NASA Vehicle Assembly Building is seen after the return of the Space Shuttle Atlantis was postponed due to bad weather at the Kennedy Space Center on May 22, 2009 in Cape Canaveral, Florida. The Space Shuttle Atlantis is returning from a mission to service the Hubble telescope.
The image was captured using Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys and Wide Field Camera 3 instruments.
The Path to Further Discovery of the Dark Matter
One of the big questions in cosmology is why enormous structures like Abell 611 don't fly apart, as it doesn't look like they contain enough mass to hold themselves together with gravity. The explanation for this, so far, is that it does contain much more mass than we can see, and the hypothetical unseen mass is referred to as dark matter.
The thing is, searching for dark matter is challenging because it doesn't interact with light. Therefore, it makes it invisible and has never been directly detected. In fact, even cosmologists are not sure what its form is and its effects on the universe.
In Abell 611, there are similar effects on a large cosmic scale, wherein more mass is necessary to explain the behavior of the galaxies.
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Abell 611
Abell 611 is deemed useful for studying dark matter due to the many massive galaxies that appear close together, which demonstrates gravitational lensing.
Gravitation lensing is a phenomenon where one massive object sits in front of another from our point of view, and the gravity of that intermediate object is so great that it bends spacetime. Thus, it changes the intermediate object, which can serve like a magnifying glass that bends the light from the further away galaxy. This lets astronomers see extremely distant objects.
In addition, the degree of lensing can be used to work out the mass of the objects involved. When this is calculated, the mass of the cluster is higher than the observed mass would suggest. Therefore, it supports the idea that there is an unseen material, like dark matter, that fills up the cluster.
Looking ahead, the next step is to try to see the dark matter directly, which will require building new space-based instruments.
The Importance of Dark Matter to our Understanding of the Universe
Dark matter is thought to be about five times more abundant than ordinary matter in the universe. In fact, all the asteroids, planets, stars, gas, and other heavenly bodies make up only about 15% of the matter of the universe.
So, if we only have an understanding of about 15% of the universe, how do we know about the other 85%?
Scientists believe that 85% of the universe is made up of dark energy and dark matter.
Dark energy is a mysterious force that drives the expansion of the universe. In fact, recent evidence suggests that dark energy makes up about 68% of the total energy in the universe.
This is a major challenge for physicists who study the universe in its early stages.
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Written by April Fowell
