You’ve seen the Black Eye Galaxy, and NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope captures a cosmic cobweb just in time for Halloween. Called Abell 611, this cluster of galaxies is located 3.2 billion light-years from Earth, all held together by an invisible dark matter rather than simply mass.
Dark matter still has yet to be observed, although researchers did come up with a prevalent theory that the universe contains vast amounts of this substance. Aside from its ominous-sounding name, ‘dark’ just refers to the fact that this unknown quantity does not seem to interact with light as other matter does, whether it be emitting, reflecting, or absorbing any part of the electromagnetic spectrum.
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If dark matter remains stubbornly undefinable, fortunately it is readily quantifiable. In fact, galaxy clusters such as Abell 611 are ideal laboratories for the quantification of dark matter, owing to the abundant evidence of gravitational lensing visible within the cluster,” said the ESA.
