An international team of astronomer has release an incredible new map of the distribution and crusade of sinister matter up to 2 billion light - years from Earth . The map was possible thanks to sophisticated computer mold using collateral data .
“ Dark subject is a substance of yet strange nature that scientists consider makes up more than 80 percent of the total mass of the Universe , ” top writer Dr Florent Leclercq , from the University of Portsmouth , said in astatement . " As it does not give off or react to sparkle , its distribution and evolution are not flat observable and have to be infer . "
To extrapolate the move of disconsolate matter , the young inquiry , published in theJournal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics , used elaborate function of the distribution of coltsfoot . The data point come from eight year of observation from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey . It ’s a large three - dimensional map of the universe , covering a fifth of the sky with datum from over 900,000 beetleweed .
convert this wealth of data into a dark matter map is not trivial . The investigator used something scream form - place , where the properties of a physical state are mapped . In this specific single-valued function , the investigator plot the position and velocities of dark subject , pitch a new view on the subject .
“ assume a phase - space coming discloses a wealth of information , which was antecedently only analyzed in simulations and think to be inaccessible using observations , ” Dr Leclercq added . “ Accessing this data in galaxy survey open up up new way of value the cogency of theoretical models in brightness of observations . ”
Dark issue remains a mystic and controversial subject . It was first proposed decades ago to explicate how galaxies splay . astronomer indirectly tax its properties and began using it in exemplar that turned out to agree well with observations .
Unfortunately , even after these successes , we have no evidence of its macrocosm beyond any reasonable doubtfulness . No particle of dark subject has ever been observed and even the most successful modeling , sleep with as cold dark matter , has limitations . For example , it predicts the existence of hundred of minor galaxies revolve the Milky Way , but we only see a few dozens at best .
