Dark Matter, features and articles | Educational Science

May 19, 2018

What Can the Death of a Neutron Tell Us About Dark Matter?

(Inside Science) — Exactly how long a neutron lives is currently under debate. Now researchers suggest this mystery could be solved if neutrons sometimes decay into particles of dark matter, the invisible substance thought to make up more than four-fifths of all matter in the universe. A flurry of research...

Jun 2, 2018

Dark Matter May Have an Electric Charge

Dark matter, the stuff that's hypothesized to make up about a quarter of the universe yet doesn't seem to interact with light at all, could have a tiny electric charge, according to a new study. So far, dark matter has made its presence known only through gravity, by tugging on...

Jul 3, 2018

Remember That Dark-Matter-Free Galaxy? It May Have Dark Matter After All

A galaxy that is supposedly devoid of all dark matter might actually be full of it. And that, paradoxically, could mean dark matter doesn't exist. What?! Back in March, a team of astrophysicists published a paper in the journal Nature claiming to have found a galaxy lacking dark matter —...

Jul 30, 2018

Another Dark-Matter Search Fails — Shedding Light on the Universe

Once again, dark matter has failed to turn up where researchers hoped they might find it. PandaX — essentially a tank holding 1,280 lbs. (580 kilograms) of liquid xenon beneath the Jinping Mountains of Sichuan, China — is one of the most sensitive dark-matter detectors on the planet. If dark...

Sep 30, 2018

Scientists Pinpoint Where Dark Matter Is Hiding in the Universe

There's a huge amount of matter in the universe that we can't directly see. But scientists can tell it's there. They call it dark matter. They know it's there because its gravity tugs on the stars and galaxies around it, altering their movement. Dark matter also tugs on light as...

Nov 26, 2018

The 11 biggest unanswered questions about dark matter

Dark Matter Web (Image credit: Shutterstock)In the 1930s, a Swiss astronomer named Fritz Zwicky noticed that galaxies in a distant cluster were orbiting one another much faster than they should have been given the amount of visible mass they had. He proposed than an unseen substance, which he called dark...

Dec 7, 2018

Physicists Keep Trying — and Failing — to Find Dark Matter in Dark Places

Scientists started watching crystals sparkle in the 1990s. Those crystals sparkled more in the summer, which researchers took as evidence of dark matter. But those scientists were probably wrong, new research suggests. Scientists have very good reason to believe that dark matter exists — that there's some unseen stuff tugging...

Dec 9, 2018

Will Dark Matter Mess with These Ultraprecise Atomic Clocks?

The existence of dark matter is suggested via its gravitational effects on the movements of stars and galaxies. However, it remains a mystery as to what it might be composed of, and projects ranging from the most powerful atom smasher ever built to vats of chilly liquid xenon have failed...

Jan 1, 2019

4 Dark Matter Searches to Watch in 2019

2018 was a big year for dark matter. As usual, astronomers didn't actually find any of the stuff, which is invisible to all our telescopes but appears to make up at least 80 percent of the universe by mass. There were reports of a dark matter hurricane, but we can't...

Jan 2, 2019

Scientists Find the 'Missing' Dark Matter from the Early Universe

Dark matter, it seems, has been clinging to galaxies for a very long time. Most galaxies that existed 10 billion years ago had about as much dark matter as galaxies do today, contradicting earlier studies that suggested less dark matter lurked around galaxies in the early universe. Dark matter was...

Jan 14, 2019

Dark Matter Behaves Differently in Dying Galaxies

Dark matter detectives barely know anything about dark matter, but now they know this: It behaves differently on the fringes of old galaxies than in new ones. Dark matter is the stuff we can't see in the universe. It makes up most of the mass in the universe but doesn't...

Apr 11, 2019

Is Dark Matter Fuzzy?

Physicists have long sought to uncloak dark matter and get an actual look at the mysterious substance that makes up a quarter of the universe. One idea for what's hiding beneath the cloak of invisibility? Many tiny, fuzzy particles that behave like one gigantic particle. But the most recent hunt...

Jul 26, 2019

'Dark Matter Bullets' Could Tear Through the Human Body, Wild New Study Suggests

About a quarter of the universe's mass consists of a mysterious, unseen substance called dark matter. And there's a chance that one form of it could behave like tiny, high-speed projectiles, blasting through human flesh like bullets, a new study suggests. In fact, the dark matter impact would generate so...

Oct 16, 2019

Exotic 'Fuzzy' Dark Matter May Have Created Giant Filaments Across the Early Universe

Dark matter, the mysterious substance making up a quarter of the mass and energy of the universe, might be made from extremely tiny and light particles, new research suggests. This “fuzzy” form of dark matter—called that because these miniscule particles' wavelengths would be smeared out over a colossally huge area—would...

Dec 3, 2019

19 Galaxies Are Apparently Missing Dark Matter. No One Knows Why.

Nineteen newly discovered dwarf galaxies seem to be missing their dark matter, and physicists aren't sure why. The find dramatically increases the number of galaxies that appear to be missing dark matter, the mysterious, invisible stuff that exerts gravitational pull, yet emits no light. Dark matter is thought to be...