MEXICO CITY, April 17 (Al Momento News) .- For the first time the interaction of dark matter could be observed with other matter of a otherwise than generates its own gravity, so captándose early indications about the nature of this mysterious component of the universe, the European Southern Observatory (ESO, for its acronym in English) reported.
The galaxies are within clumps of dark matter. Without such binding gravity of dark matter, galaxies like the Milky Way would disintegrate when turning to avoid this purpose it is necessary that 85 percent of the mass of the universe is dark matter, but its true nature remains a mystery.
The sighting of their interaction with other matter was accomplished by observing galaxies in collision with the MUSE instrument installed on the VLT (Very Large Telescope) of ESO and with the Hubble Space Telescope NASA / ESA. With all these references, a team of astronomers was given the task of studying the simultaneous collision of four galaxies in the galaxy cluster Abell 3827.
Although dark matter can not be seen, the team was able to deduce their location due to the distorting effect that its mass in the light of the background galaxies; this technique was called “gravitational lensing”.
The collision occurred off fifth background galaxy whose light had to travel through the collision to reach Earth. While the cluster mass violently distorted spacetime, diverting the path of the light from the distant galaxy.
The researchers found that the four galaxies in collision had a cluster of dark matter, which seemed to fall behind the galaxy around her. So, that dark matter is behind the galaxy, at a distance of 5 billion (50 billion billion kilometers), a point so far from our galaxy light years, so the Voyager spacecraft NASA take 90 million years to arrive.
The discovery predicts that there may be a lag between dark matter and galaxy collisions associated for whether dark matter interacts with itself, even if very slightly, and by forces other than gravity.
Never had observed dark matter interacting in some way not to go through the force of gravity, so that such action has caused amazement researchers.
Richard Massey, University of Durham, said: “We used to think that dark matter is simply there, minding your own business, except when we see its gravitational pull. But if dark matter was slowed during the collision, it could be the first valuable physical evidence for those working in the field of dark matter, ie, the hidden around us universe. “
However, researchers have identified the need to investigate other effects that could also produce this gap. So they must be carried out similar observations over galaxies and computer simulations of these collisions of galaxies.
“We know that dark matter exists because of the way it interacts gravitationally helping to shape the universe, but we still know very little about what actually is. Our observation suggests that dark matter could interact with other forces that are not serious, which would mean we could discard some fundamental theories about what could be the dark matter, “explained Liliya Williams of the University of Minnesota team member research.
The result was detached from other recent studies that were obtained by the team observed 72 collisions between clusters of galaxies and found that dark matter interacts very little with herself . However, the new work refers to the movement of individual galaxies, rather than that of galaxy clusters.
The researchers said the collision of these galaxies could have lasted more collisions observed in the previous study, allowing the effects generated by a frictional force (albeit very small) they are accumulated over time and create a measurable lag.
When joining two results give first, a limit to the behavior of dark matter. Ie dark matter makes one hand, more than this, but on the other, unless that. Massey said: “We are finally” corralling
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