Science News

Astronomers at the University of Zürich and the ETH Zürich, together with other international researchers, have found large amounts of invisible "dark matter" near the Sun. Their results are inconsistent with the theory that the Milky Way Galaxy is surrounded by a massive "halo" of dark matter, but this is the first study of its kind to use a method rigorously tested against mock data from high quality simulations. The authors also find tantalizing hints of a new dark matter component in our Galaxy.

Astrophysicists using Europe's MPG/ESO 2.2-meter telescope in Chile have discovered that theorized Dark Matter is not where it is supposed to be. This realiz...

Scientists have further narrowed the search for a hypothetical particle that could be dark matter, the mysterious stuff that makes up 80 percent of all the mass in the universe. This video from NASA Astrophysics presents the new results, compiled from two years' worth of data from NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope.

Articles about ASTRONOMY: http://www.scoop.it/t/science-news?tag=astronomy

The collision of two clusters of galaxies 5 billion light-years away could help astronomers better understand...

Brown University physicists have set the strongest limit for the mass of dark matter, the mysterious particles believed to make up nearly a quarter of the universe. The researchers report in Physical Review Letters that dark matter must have a mass greater than 40 giga-electron volts. The distinction is important because it casts doubt on recent results from underground experiments that have reported detecting dark matter.

Astronomers from the University of Bonn in Germany have discovered a vast structure of satellite galaxies and clusters of stars surrounding our Galaxy, stretching out across a million light years. The work challenges the existence of dark matter, part of the standard model for the evolution of the universe.

Articles about ASTRONOMY: http://www.scoop.it/t/science-news?tag=astronomy

Dark matter stars: not an attempt to destroy the rebels in Star Wars IX, but gigantic stars fueled by the annihilation of dark matter.

New research concludes that instead of "edges," galaxies have long outskirts of dark matter that extend to nearby galaxies and that the intergalactic space is not empty but filled with dark matter.

Even the most powerful high-tech telescopes are barely able to record remote low-mass and thus faint stars.

Some time ago, I interviewed Weinberg about his work and the anthropic principle, which led him to this striking prediction. “The universe,” he told me, “could well be like a giant Schrödinger’s Cat. There are parts of the universe where the cat is alive, where the cosmological constant is just the right level and there are scientists there observing it and asking questions. And there are parts of the universe where the cat is dead—where the cosmological constant is too small or too large and therefore there is no life and no scientists asking questions about the universe.” To me, this image of the giant cat is the best analogy for a universe governed by the powerful, and yet perhaps disturbing, idea of the anthropic principle.

A new study about dark matter has cast doubt on previous results that claimed to have found possible signatures of exotic particles that are left behind when dark matter is annihilated.