Of all of the questions going through astronomers at the moment, among the greatest unknowns are concerning the stuff that makes up many of the universe. We all know that the abnormal matter we see throughout us makes up just 5% of all that exists, whereas the remaining is made up of darkish matter and darkish power. However as a result of darkish matter doesn’t work together with gentle, this can be very arduous to review — we have now to deduce its existence and place from wanting on the approach it interacts with the abnormal matter round it.
Latest analysis helps on this activity by producing essentially the most correct map thus far of how each matter and darkish matter are unfold throughout the universe. Astronomers collected data from two completely different telescopes, the Dark Energy Survey telescope and the South Pole Telescope, to make their map as exact as attainable.
For each telescope knowledge units, the researchers used the phenomenon of gravitational lensing — through which a large physique like a star, galaxy, or galaxy cluster warps spacetime and acts like a magnifying glass — to detect each common matter and darkish matter.
The outcomes introduced some surprises, like the truth that matter is much less clumpy than can be anticipated based mostly on present fashions of how the universe shaped. It exhibits that the matter is extra evenly unfold out that predicted. If different surveys discover comparable outcomes, this might point out that there’s something lacking from present theories on how the universe shaped within the interval instantly following the Huge Bang.
“I feel this train confirmed each the challenges and advantages of doing these sorts of analyses,” stated one of many lead authors of the analysis, Chihway Chang of the College of Chicago, in a statement. “There’s plenty of new issues you are able to do once you mix these completely different angles of wanting on the universe.”
The analysis is revealed in three papers within the journal Physical Review D.
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