Dark matter is invisible matter that may make up 80 percent of the universe.
REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, JAKARTA — Researchers made a map dark matter biggest. Dark matter is invisible matter which is estimated to make up 80 percent of the total matter of the universe.
As matter forms a spacetime curve, astronomers map its existence by looking at light traveling to Earth from distant galaxies. If the light is distorted, this means that there is matter in the foreground, bending the incident light.
A team led by researchers at the University College of London (UCL), as part of the Dark Energy Survey (DES), used artificial intelligence to analyze images of 100 million galaxies, looking at their shape, the specks of light made up of 10 or more galaxies. more pixels, to see if this has been stretched.
The new map, a representation of all the material detected in the foreground of the observed galaxy, covers a quarter of Earth’s southern hemisphere sky. New analysis from the first three years of the DES survey shows matter is distributed throughout the universe in a manner consistent with predictions in the standard cosmological model, the best current model of the universe.
The researchers also found hints like previous surveys, the universe may be several percent more ‘smooth’ than previously thought. This prediction comes from analysis of residual light from the Big Bang.
Study co-lead author, Niall Jeffrey reported The Independent, Friday (28/5) said that most of the matter in the universe is dark matter. Therefore, it is amazing to catch a glimpse of this vast and hidden structure in most of the night sky.
This structure was revealed using the distorted shape of hundreds of millions of distant galaxies with photos from the Dark Energy Camera in Chile. The researchers saw the same pattern as visible matter alone, in which a web structure with clumps of dense matter separated by large empty cavities.
“Observing the structure of this cosmic scale can help us answer fundamental questions about the universe,” explains Jeffrey.
Study co-author Ofer Lahav said the visible galaxies formed in the densest region of dark matter. When looking at the night sky, the glow of the galaxy is visible, but not the dark matter around it, but light like a city at night.
By calculating how gravity distorts light, a technique known as gravitational lensing, an overall picture is obtained of both visible and invisible matter. This then led people to understand what the universe was made of and how the process of evolution took place.
“It also demonstrates the power of artificial intelligence methods to analyze one of the largest datasets in astronomy,” Lahav explained.
The map is described in a new paper uploaded on the DES website and will be published in Royal Astronomical Society.
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