Astronomers are back in the dark about what dark matter might be, after new observations showed the mysterious substance may not be interacting with forces other than gravity after all. Dr Andrew Robertson of Durham University will today (Friday 6 April) present the new results at the European Week of Astronomy and Space Science in Liverpool.
Three years ago, a Durham-led international team of researchers thought they had made a breakthrough in ultimately identifying what dark matter is.
Observations using the Hubble Space Telescope appeared to show that a galaxy in the Abell 3827 cluster – approximately 1.3 billion light years from Earth – had become separated from the dark matter surrounding it.
Such an offset is predicted during collisions if dark matter interacts with forces other than gravity, potentially providing clues about what the substance might be.
The chance orientation at which the Abell 3827 cluster is seen from Earth makes it possible to conduct highly sensitive measurements of its dark matter.
However, the same group of astronomers now say that new data from more recent observations shows that dark matter in the Abell 3827 cluster has not separated from its galaxy after all. The measurement is consistent with dark matter feeling only the force of gravity.
Lead author Dr. Richard Massey, in the Center for Extragalactic Astronomy, at Durham University, said: “The search for dark matter is frustrating, but that’s science. When data improves, the conclusions can change.”
“Meanwhile the hunt goes on for dark matter to reveal its nature.”
“So long as dark matter doesn’t interact with the Universe around it, we are having a hard time working out what it is.”
The Universe is composed of approximately 27 percent dark matter with the remainder largely consisting of the equally mysterious dark energy. Normal matter, such as planets and stars, contributes a relatively small five percent of the Universe.
There is believed to be about five times more dark matter than all the other particles understood by science, but nobody knows what it is.
However, dark matter is an essential factor in how the Universe looks today, as without the constraining effect of its extra gravity, galaxies like our Milky Way would fling themselves apart as they spin.
In this latest study, the researchers used the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile, South America, to view the Abell 3827 cluster.
ALMA picked up on the distorted infra-red light from an unrelated background galaxy, revealing the location of the otherwise invisible dark matter that remained unidentified in their previous study.
A supercomputer simulation of a collision between two galaxy clusters, similar to the real object known as the ‘Bullet Cluster’, and showing the same effects tested for in Abell 3827. All galaxy clusters contain stars (orange), hydrogen gas (shown as red) and invisible dark matter (shown as blue). Individual stars, and individual galaxies are so far apart from each other that they whizz straight past each other. The diffuse gas slows down and becomes separated from the galaxies, due to the forces between ordinary particles that act as friction. If dark matter feels only the force of gravity, it should stay in the same place as the stars, but if it feels other forces, its trajectory through this giant particle collider would be changed. Credit: Andrew Robertson/Institute for Computational Cosmology/Durham University
Research co-author Professor Liliya Williams, of the University of Minnesota, said: “We got a higher resolution view of the distant galaxy using ALMA than from even the Hubble Space Telescope.”
“The true position of the dark matter became clearer than in our previous observations.”
While the new results show dark matter staying with its galaxy, the researchers said it did not necessarily mean that dark matter does not interact. Dark matter might just interact very little, or this particular galaxy might be moving directly towards us, so we would not expect to see its dark matter displaced sideways, the team added.
Several new theories of non-standard dark matter have been invented over the past two years and many have been simulated at Durham University using high-powered supercomputers.
A simulation of the same collision if dark matter consisted of extremely strongly ‘self-interacting’ particles that feel large forces in addition to gravity. The resulting distribution of dark matter and gas disagrees with what is observed in the real Universe – indeed, the interaction is so strong in this case that the dark matter stopped close to the point of impact. Since this is not seen in the real Universe, this enables us to rule out this particular model of dark matter. Credit: Andrew Robertson/Institute for Computational Cosmology/Durham University
Robertson, who is a co-author of the work, and based at Durham University’s Institute for Computational Cosmology, added: “Different properties of dark matter do leave tell-tale signs.”
“We will keep looking for nature to have done the experiment we need, and for us to see it from the right angle.”
“One especially interesting test is that dark matter interactions make clumps of dark matter more spherical. That’s the next thing we’re going to look for.”
To measure the dark matter in hundreds of galaxy clusters and continue this investigation, Durham University has just finished helping to build the new SuperBIT telescope, which gets a clear view by rising above the Earth’s atmosphere under a giant helium balloon.
The research was funded by the Royal Society and the Science and Technology Facilities Council in the UK and NASA. The findings will appear in a new paper in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
A simulation of the same collision if dark matter didn’t exist. The resulting distribution of stars and gas disagrees with what is observed in the real Universe, which provides compelling evidence that dark matter is present in the real Universe. Credit: Andrew Robertson/Institute for Computational Cosmology/Durham University
Paper: Dark matter dynamics in Abell 3827: new data consistent with standard Cold Dark Matter