What is Dark Matter ?

Dark matter is composed of particles that do not absorb, reflect, or emit light, so they cannot be detected by observing electromagnetic radiation. Dark matter is material that cannot be seen directly.

It turns out that roughly 68% of the universe is dark energy. Dark matter makes up about 27%. The rest – everything on Earth, everything ever observed with all of our instruments, all normal matter – adds up to less than 5% of the universe.

Since at least the 1920s, astronomers have hypothesized that the universe contains more matter than seen by the naked eye. Support for dark matter has grown since then, and although no solid direct evidence of dark matter has been detected, there have been strong possibilities in recent years.

“Motions of the stars tell you how much matter there is,” Pieter van Dokkum, a researcher at Yale University, said in a statement. “They don’t care what form the matter is, they just tell you that it’s there.” Van Dokkum led a team that identified the galaxy Dragonfly 44, which is composed almost entirely of dark matter.

Dark matter appears to be spread across the cosmos in a network-like pattern, with galaxy clusters forming at the nodes where fibers intersect. By verifying that gravity acts the same both inside and outside our solar system, researchers provide additional evidence for the existence of dark matter and dark energy. 

Albert Einstein showed that massive objects in the universe bend and distort light, allowing them to be used as lenses. By studying how light is distorted by galaxy clusters, astronomers have been able to create a map of dark matter in the universe.