Roughly 80 percent of the mass of the universe appears to be dark matter: an invisible material that seems to interact with ordinary matter only through gravity, without emitting light or energy. Scientists cannot detect dark matter directly and don't yet know what it's made of, but they track its influence based on the motions of stars and galaxies. The presence of dark matter is necessary to explain the universe's current structure.
Related Topics: The Big Bang Theory, Black Holes, The Theory of Relativity in Space, Gravitational Waves
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Latest about dark matter
Dark matter might live in a dense haze around stellar corpses
The extreme qualities of neutron stars could mean these dead stellar remnants gather dense clouds of hypothetical particles called "axions" around them, potentially shedding light on dark matter.
Massive, bustling Perseus galaxy cluster dazzles in new telescope image
Deep in the heart of the massive Perseus cluster, giant galaxies stir, stars are torn from their homes and hot gas radiates at more than 1 million degrees Celsius.
Euclid 'dark universe' telescope reveals 1st breathtaking images from massive 'cosmic atlas' map
The "first page" of an incredible cosmic atlas being built by the Euclid Space Telescope has been released. The millions of stars and galaxies represent just 1% of the 3D map the mission will create.
Cosmic rays have surprising amounts of antimatter. Is dark matter responsible?
There's too much antimatter in cosmic rays, showers of charged particles that pelt Earth. Could this be explained by annihilating dark matter? If so, does it point to the existence of WIMPs?
The Milky Way's 2 biggest satellite galaxies are oddly lonely, study finds
The Milky Way's system of small, orbiting satellite galaxies is quite unusual, a new 12-year study of other galaxies in the local universe has found.
Did dark matter help black holes grow to monster sizes in the infant cosmos?
Could dark matter decay have given massive clouds of hydrogen gas the time they needed to birth supermassive black holes seen by the James Webb Space Telescope?
Black hole 'bullets' fired at Mars could reveal more about dark matter
Tiny black hole "bullets" left over from the Big Bang could be passing through Mars at speeds in excess of 7,000 times the speed of sound, causing the Red Planet to "wobble."
AI is on the hunt for dark matter
The secrets of dark matter might be hiding in the immense cosmic crashes that are colliding galaxy clusters.
