The Weird Shape of Weird Stuff
Although dark matter is invisible, astronomers can still work out where it is in space from the effect that its gravity has on the things around it – like seeing a sofa cushion being pushed down by an invisible man. By looking at the distorted shapes of these galaxies, a team of astronomers has worked out how the invisible material is spread out in the galaxy cluster. Surprisingly, they found that the dark matter isn’t spread out like a football, as they had expected, but that it is shaped more like a rugby ball.
Credit:
X-ray: NASA/CXC/Caltech/A.Newman et al/Tel Aviv/A.Morandi & M.Limousin; Optical: NASA/STScI, ESO/VLT, SDSS
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