14 DAY TRIAL // As if seeing a creepy face floating in outer space weren't enough to spook us about as much as learning that Bollywood wants to make its own version of the “Twilight” saga surely would, astronomers are now saying that dark matter is probably lurking all around our planet.
Writing in the journal Nature, researchers with the Stockholm University in Sweden say that, having studied the behavior of the gas and the stars that comprise our home galaxy, they found evidence that the Milky Way hosts dark matter in its innermost regions.
Seeing how dark matter neither emits nor absorbs light, researchers can only study it by documenting the effect its gravitational pull has on the celestial bodies that we can observe with the help of telescopes and other scientific instruments.
Apparently, the motion patterns displayed by gas and stars in our cosmic neighborhood and in the innermost region of the Milky Way can only be explained by taking into account the presence of massive amounts of dark matter in this corner of the universe.
“The observed rotation cannot be explained unless large amounts of dark matter exist around us, and between us and the Galactic center,” explains astronomer Miguel Pato with the Stockholm University's Department of Physics.
Researcher Miguel Pato and colleagues claim that, by further studying the distribution of dark matter across the Milky Way, they will manage to gain a better understanding of how this galaxy that is our own cosmic home came into being and evolved in time.
