2/23/2005

Invisible Galaxy Discovered

Scientists have discovered an "invisible galaxy". At face value this would seem nothing more than an oddity. It is in fact, the long awaited verification of theories regarding "dark matter".

Scientists had long puzzled over the measured acceleration rates of galaxies and how these rates did not add up. Taking the mass of all the visible matter into account, the acceleration rate should be much lower than what they measured. That is when "dark matter" theories were born. Scientists speculated that there must be matter in the universe that did not emit light, and hence was invisible or dark and that this "dark matter" in fact accounted for the measured acceleration rates.

Calculations estimate that the object found is composed of a 500 parts dark matter to 1 part hydrogen. We still do not know what dark matter is, but now we do know that it, in fact exists. This one knot of dark matter does not account for all of the missing mass of the universe, but it is indeed a start. The article speculates that these dark galaxies may in fact be more plentiful than the bright ones...

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