Tag

Dark Matter

All articles tagged with #dark matter

space14 hours ago•9 min saved

CosmoCube: A Tiny Moon Mission Aims to Hear the Universe’s Dark Ages

A UK-led project called CosmoCube, a suitcase-sized satellite, would orbit the Moon’s far side to shield from Earth’s radio noise and search for the faint 21-centimeter hydrogen signal from the cosmos before the first stars, potentially revealing how dark matter influenced the early universe; over a planned two-year mission it would accumulate about 1,000 hours of observations using a compact radiometer, with hopes to launch within five years and demonstrate low-cost cosmology from small satellites.

via SciTechDaily|

#21-centimeter-cosmology #cosmocube #dark-matter

space-and-spaceflight19 hours ago•16 min saved

Sharp Gamma-Ray Hint Sparks Fresh Dark Matter Debate

A Chinese Academy of Sciences team reports a sharp gamma-ray line in 15.5 years of Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope data, arguing it provides strong direct evidence for dark matter in the form of weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs). The authors say the signal fits expectations for WIMP annihilation, but gamma-ray lines can arise from instrumental or astrophysical sources, so confirmation will require further data and independent verification as new gamma-ray observatories come online.

via Gizmodo|

#dark-matter #fermi-gamma-ray-space-telescope #gamma-rays

science1 day ago•10 min saved

NASA's Roman Space Telescope Set to Unveil Dark Forces and New Worlds

NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, launching from Kennedy Space Center, will map hundreds of millions of stars and galaxies with a wide infrared view, search for up to 200,000 exoplanets via transits and microlensing, and probe dark matter and dark energy through weak gravitational lensing—potentially addressing key cosmological tensions and expanding our understanding of the universe.

via WIRED|

#dark-energy #dark-matter #exoplanets

space1 day ago•1 min saved

NASA's Roman Space Telescope set to unlock dark matter and distant worlds

NASA plans to launch the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope later this month, featuring a 2.4-meter mirror and a 300-megapixel infrared camera to survey wide swaths of the sky. Its field of view will be about 100 times larger than Hubble’s, enabling studies of dark matter and exoplanets, with Japan contributing an instrument and ground stations for data. The launch from Kennedy Space Center is slated for August 30, with first observations after about three months of testing.

via nhk.or.jp|

#dark-matter #exoplanets #nasa

science3 days ago•46 min saved

Dark Matter as a Cosmic Magnifier Reveals Neutrino Origins

Researchers propose that some IceCube neutrino detections are magnified by gravitational lensing from a dark-matter filament deflecting emissions from the blazar PKS 2233-148, a finding that could sharpen our view of how neutrinos are produced and the black hole at a blazar’s core.

via Yahoo|

#blazar-pks-2233-148 #dark-matter #gravitational-lensing

space4 days ago•6 min saved

One-Hour Light Bender Hints at Primordial Black Hole in Milky Way Halo

A star in the Large Magellanic Cloud briefly brightened for about an hour in 2019 due to gravitational microlensing by an unseen object nicknamed Phoebe. Its mass is estimated at roughly three lunar masses, too light to be a planet or stellar black hole. Analyses favor Phoebe being a dark-matter object in the Milky Way halo, with a primordial black hole as a leading exotic possibility; if confirmed, it would be among the oldest objects in the universe. Alternatives include a free-floating planet in the Milky Way or in the LMC. The event highlights microlensing as a tool to probe dark matter and compact objects.

via SciTechDaily|

#dark-matter #early-universe #gravitational-microlensing

science4 days ago•159 min saved

Dark Photons Could Still Be Dark Matter, Say New Simulations

New computer simulations show that the conversion of dark photons to ordinary photons in the early universe may not heat the cosmos as much as previously thought, reopening expanded parameter space for dark photon dark matter and potentially guiding new experimental searches.

via Space|

#cosmology #dark-matter #dark-photons

science4 days ago•15 min saved

Gravity as Information Compression: A Bold New Take on Cosmology

Physicist Melvin Vopson argues that information is as fundamental as mass and energy and that gravity emerges as a data‑compression, entropy‑minimizing process; the theory, which recovers Newton’s law from information dynamics, challenges the need for dark matter and dark energy and points to a computation-like optimization at the heart of the cosmos.

via IAI TV|

#cosmology #dark-matter #entropy

science5 days ago•160 min saved

Invisible dark-matter lens briefly boosts a blazar’s jet, hinting at neutrino sources

Astronomers report that the jet from a distant blazar (PKS 2233-148) is being gravitationally lensed by an unseen dark-matter clump, temporarily magnifying the jet and potentially aiding the search for high-energy neutrino sources; the finding, supported by VLBA, Fermi, and Swift observations and published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, offers a first hint that dark-matter substructure can produce lensing effects in relativistic cosmic jets.

via Space|

#blazar #dark-matter #gravitational-lensing

space6 days ago•5 min saved

Rubin Observatory Detects Aquarius IV, a Faint Milky Way Satellite

Scientists using Rubin Observatory’s Early Data Preview 2 have announced Aquarius IV, an ultra-faint Milky Way satellite about 355,000 light-years away with an apparent magnitude of 18.3. The object was first spotted in Rubin data and later confirmed in archival images from the Dark Energy Camera, illustrating Rubin LSST’s potential to uncover many more faint satellites. Whether Aquarius IV is truly an ultra-faint dwarf galaxy or an unusually large globular cluster remains provisional, pending further spectroscopy and peer review.

via EarthSky|

#astronomy #dark-matter #dwarf-galaxies

space11 days ago•206 min saved

Cosmic breadcrumb: first globular-cluster stellar stream spotted beyond the Milky Way

Astronomers discovered the first globular-cluster stellar stream outside the Milky Way, in a galaxy about 115 million light-years away, by analyzing archival data from the Hubble Space Telescope. The faint stellar trail reveals the host galaxy's gravitational field and total mass, offering a new way to map dark matter and understand how galaxies form and evolve across the universe.

via CNN|

#dark-matter #galaxies #globular-clusters

science13 days ago•5 min saved

Ancient Black Holes Hint at a Bouncing Universe and Dark Matter

Researchers propose a bouncing cosmology in which some black holes formed during a prior contracting phase survive the bounce as relics, potentially comprising all or part of dark matter and seeding early galaxy formation; the idea links the bounce to inflation and dark energy and suggests tests via relic gravitational waves or subtle pre–Big Bang patterns in the cosmic microwave background.

via ScienceDaily|

#cosmic-bounce #dark-matter #inflation

technology17 days ago•4 min saved

Levitating magnetometer senses ultrafaint brain activity at femtotesla scale

Scientists have built a levitating magnetometer inside a vacuum that can detect the brain’s faint magnetic signals at femtotesla-level strengths, offering a simpler, closer-to-sample alternative to SQUIDs and SERF devices and potentially enabling advances in neuroscience and dark matter searches.

via Nature|

#biophysics #brain-activity #dark-matter

entertainment19 days ago•4 min saved

Apple TV+ stacks fall lineup: Ted Lasso returns with new seasons for Slow Horses and Dark Matter

Ted Lasso returns for Season 4 with new episodes rolling out weekly through October 7. Apple TV+ also brings back Slow Horses for Season 6 (premiering Sept 16, with weekly episodes through Oct 21) and Dark Matter for Season 2 (premiering Aug 28, with weekly episodes through Oct 30), plus upcoming premieres including Mayday, Brothers, and Last Seen.

via 9to5Mac|

#apple-tv #dark-matter #entertainment

science21 days ago•2 min saved

Hidden Fifth Dimension May Tie Dark Matter to Dark Photons in a Resonant Link

A new theory posits that dark matter and dark photons share access to a hidden fifth spatial dimension, where the dimension's geometry enforces a fixed mass ratio via a dark matter resonance. This resonance would have amplified interactions in the early universe and weakened them as the cosmos cooled, potentially explaining why direct detection remains elusive today. The idea is being tested by experiments such as CERN's NA64, with complementary searches like HeRALD and Oscura; the framework could also address small-scale structure issues like the scarcity of dwarf galaxies. While MOND remains an alternative, Gaia and Fermi data currently favor dark matter models.

via Futura, le média qui explore le monde|

#dark-matter #dark-photons #extra-dimensions