The Subaru Telescope, located on one of the islands of the American state of Hawaii and operated by Japan, has captured the terminal ends of galactic threads formed by dark matter for the first time. The image was captured from the Coma Galaxy Cluster, which spans millions of light-years, marking the first time the galactic filament network covering the entire universe has been detected.
Unlike the observable stars, planets, and celestial bodies that gather mass through gravity forces into round shapes, dark matter, which constitutes the majority of the universe, exists in the form of an intricate network of thin threads stretching vast distances. This network resembles a spider web, with the thin threads not easily visible, leading scientists to base their conclusions and interpretations on the shapes of galaxies and the gases trapped within them.
A team of researchers from Yonsei University in Korea used the Subaru Telescope to search for direct signs of dark matter threads within the Coma Galaxy Cluster situated 321 million light-years away in the constellation of Coma Berenices. Their research paper titled “Detection of weak lensing features of galaxy filaments within the Coma galaxy cluster” was published in the journal Nature Astronomy earlier this year.
The Coma Galaxy Cluster is one of the largest and closest galaxy clusters, making it a distinctive location to search for any signs or clues of dark matter. Due to its relatively close distance, fully monitoring and observing the Coma Galaxy Cluster is challenging. To overcome this issue, the Subaru Telescope’s lenses provided a solution that combines sensitivity, high precision, and a wide field of view. Through data analysis, the team could identify the edges of these invisible threads.
Cosmological hypotheses, widely accepted by the scientific community today, suggest that galaxy clusters grow at intersections of dark matter, which makes up around 85% of the universe, existing in networks extending tens of millions of light-years. This hypothesis is supported by the distribution of galaxies in the universe observed in recent years as part of the search for direct evidence of dark matter, accessing and analyzing galactic threads.
This marks the first time a scientific team has succeeded in detecting galactic threads, providing new evidence on the structure of dark matter that forms the majority of the universe.
