Dark Matter

Roughly 80 percent of the mass of the universe appears to be dark matter: an invisible material that seems to interact with ordinary matter only through gravity, without emitting light or energy. Scientists cannot detect dark matter directly and don't yet know what it's made of, but they track its influence based on the motions of stars and galaxies. The presence of dark matter is necessary to explain the universe's current structure.

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Supermassive Black Holes Likely Born in 'Halos' of Dark Matter

January 23, 2019 | Article

We now have a better idea of how big black holes were born in the early universe, a new study reports.
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A Mirror Image of Our Universe May Have Existed Before the Big Bang

January 22, 2019 | Article

Before the Big Bang, time may have run in reverse.
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Dark Matter Behaves Differently in Dying Galaxies

January 16, 2019 | Article

Astronomers barely know anything about dark matter, but now they know this: It behaves differently in old, dying galaxies than in new, star-forming ones.
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Why Physicists Are Hunting the Strangest of the Ghost Particles

January 14, 2019 | Article

These tiny subatomic particles, showering down from the depths of space, continue to surprise (and annoy) physicists chasing them.
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Scientists Find the 'Missing' Dark Matter from the Early Universe

January 07, 2019 | Article

Past studies suggested there was less dark matter earlier on in the universe’s history.
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4 Dark Matter Searches to Watch in 2019

January 03, 2019 | Article

As 2019 nears, physicists are hard at work on the next generation of dark matter detectors, and on parsing confusing data from detectors that already exist.
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Dark Matter Can Be Mapped by Light of Unmoored Stars

December 26, 2018 | Article

Stars that have been torn from their natal galaxies and now float within huge galaxy clusters can serve as dark-matter probes, a new study suggests.
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Bizarre 'Dark Fluid' with Negative Mass Could Dominate the Universe

December 17, 2018 | Article

Forget about dark matter and dark energy, new research suggests that the existence of 'dark fluid' may solve some of the biggest mysteries in physics.
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Physicists Keep Trying — and Failing — to Find Dark Matter in Dark Places

December 11, 2018 | Article

A summertime sparkle seemed to hint that researchers had found dark matter, but it looks like those scientists were wrong.
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Ultraprecise Atomic Clock Network on the Hunt For Dark Matter

December 07, 2018 | Article

Researchers are putting a global network of the most precise timekeepers ever made to the task of hunting for dark matter, the invisible and largely intangible substance that researchers think makes up about five-sixths of all matter in the universe.
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