“One of these key predictions has never been studied before is the presence of granular structures of dark matter within a galaxy or galaxy cluster. “In this model, the dark matter is composed of very light particles that act together in unison like waves, hence the name wave-like,” he continued, noting that study co-author Tom Broadhurst has pioneered many predictions about these hypothetical wave-like particles. However, this model has faced long-standing issues, and so a more recent novel model called wave-like dark matter is gaining traction.” “The existing paradigm for dark matter is the so-called WIMP (weakly interacting massive particles) cold dark matter. “Given that it's so mysterious, and it composes the majority of mass in our Universe, I found it pretty funny and crazy that we really have no idea what it is,” Amruth said of dark matter. It’s almost as if this substance is part of some shadow realm of the universe that is only tenuously connected, via gravity, to our familiar radiant world of stars and galaxies. However, this much-anticipated achievement has remained out of reach because dark matter is so elusive and unreactive. Since dark matter only interacts via gravity (and maybe the weak force in some models), this is one of the purer tests that can be done to investigate the nature of dark matter.”Īfter all, unraveling the nature of dark matter would finally fill a central hole in the standard model of particle physics, which is a theoretical framework that explains the main forces and particles observed in the universe. “The other astronomical observations, usually, depend on a lot more uncertainties, but lensing is a very specific test of the distribution of mass in a system. “We think this is a pretty strong piece of evidence that signals something about the nature of dark matter, primarily because it uses the technique of gravitational lensing,” said Amruth in an email to Motherboard. Background objects can appear distorted, magnified, and even multiplied by the gravity of foreground objects, allowing scientists to see details about distant objects that would be otherwise out of view-and now, to probe for disturbances that could indicate dark matter. Gravitational lenses are like natural telescopes that form when light from an object, such as a galaxy, is bent by the gravitational field of another object located in front of it from our perspective on Earth. Now, scientists led by Alfred Amruth, a PhD student studying astrophysics at the University of Hong Kong, have shed new light on dark matter with the help of a trippy spacetime phenomenon known as gravitational lensing, which is predicted by Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity. Though dark matter does not emit light, scientists know it exists because we can see its gravitational influence on astronomical objects, such as galaxy clusters. Dark matter is about five times more abundant in the cosmos than the familiar “baryonic” matter that makes up stars, planets, and all life on Earth, yet our efforts to determine what this weird stuff actually is have so far fallen short.

Weird space phenomena earth