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Ohio University Professor Leading Team Looking At Dark Matter
By: Taylor Pool
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A group of researchers were surprised earlier this year when Hubble Space Telescope images revealed an overabundance of dark matter in a cluster of a thousand galaxies.
But Ohio University professor Doug Clowe said the the dark matter, matter detected by its gravity and not its light, is behaving just how it's supposed to be.
"So we went back and used new images from the Hubble space telescope along with some images from a telescope down in Chile and reanalyzed this," Clowe said. "In our analysis we don't see that extra clump. So if that clump had been there, it would be telling us that dark matter somehow behaves much differently than how we're used to seeing it."
Clowe, an associate professor of physics and astronomy, is the leader one of the teams of researchers taking a second look at the data.
He said his group's analysis doesn't reveal anything new about sciences current understanding of dark matter.
To ask astronomer's about dark matter in person, there will be a star party on December 21st at the Ridges in Athens from 4 p.m. until 11.