With the death of Vera Rubin, we retrace the steps on her most important discovery. From watching the speed of stars and gas orbiting a galaxy she found a mysterious quirk in the results, and followed it to find inescapable evidence that led to the discovery of invisible and mysterious matter, 5 times more massive than all other matter in the Universe.
A recently proposed theory of gravity that got the astrophysical community’s attention is put to tests by observations. Does it succeed? Let’s find out!
A classic paper on dark matter is brought to ‘light’ in this bite, discussing a discovery that provides one of the best evidences we have for non-baryonic matter in the universe.
Star formation rate and stellar mass as telltales of dark matter and galaxy connection.
As smaller galaxies collide with our own they’re slowly torn apart. By watching how they spread across the night’s sky we can infer an incredible amount about the shape of the galaxy and the nature of dark matter.
Astronomers have recently discovered a number of galaxies made almost entirely of dark matter. Today’s astrobite takes a closer look at one of them.