Astronomers 'image' a mysterious dark object in the distant Universe
14 hours ago
- #gravitational lensing
- #dark matter
- #astrophysics
- Scientists discovered a dark object with a mass one million times that of the Sun using gravitational lensing.
- The object is located approximately 10 billion light years from Earth, dating back to when the universe was 6.5 billion years old.
- A network of radio telescopes, including the Green Bank Telescope, formed a virtual super-telescope to detect subtle gravitational signals.
- New modeling algorithms were developed to analyze the complex data, requiring supercomputers for processing.
- The discovery supports the 'cold dark matter theory' and raises questions about the prevalence of such low-mass dark objects.
- Gravitational imaging was used to map the invisible dark matter clump by observing its lensing effect on a distant radio galaxy.
- Future research aims to find more low-mass dark objects to test theories of dark matter and galaxy formation.