Dark Matter

Helmer Herman Koppelman, past Member (2020–21) in the School of Natural Sciences, has received a 2022 MERAC Prize from the European Astronomical Society for his work in theoretical astrophysics, an exceptional honor for early-career scholars.

In a new study of axion motion, researchers propose a scenario known as “kinetic misalignment” that greatly strengthens the case for axion/dark matter equivalence. The novel concept answers key questions related to the origins of dark matter and...

Occupying a region of space (L2) four times more distant than the moon, the SRG observatory is busily rendering an X-ray map of the universe and has officially reached the half-way mark of its first all-sky survey, which began in December and is...

A pioneering mission that traces its roots back to the Soviet Union achieved liftoff on July 13, 2019. Rashid Sunyaev, Maureen and John Hendricks Distinguished Visiting Professor in the School of Natural Sciences, helped conceive of the venture more...

Rashid Sunyaev, Maureen and John Hendricks Distinguished Visiting Professor in the School of Natural Sciences, is the Russian Scientific Head of the Spectrum-Roentgen-Gamma (SRG) mission, which promises a trove of data for researchers to probe the...

Melissa Pandika of OZY profiles theoretical physicist Tracy Slatyer, former Member in the School of Natural Sciences, whose work, Pandika writes, "could bring physicists closer to detecting dark matter signals by better enabling them to tease these...

Everything that humans have seen up until now exists in the 4.9 per cent of the universe that interacts with light. The rest is hidden from view. Most of it, physicists believe—68.3 per cent—is dark energy, an enigmatic force that drives the...

Dark matter is as tangible as stars and planets to most astronomers. We routinely map it out. We conceive of galaxies as lumps of dark matter with dabs of luminous material. We understand the formation of cosmic structure, as well as the evolution of...

Could dark matter consist of primordial black holes, as numerous as the stars? It’s an old, improbable idea, but it made a Lazarus-like comeback a year ago, when the discovery of gravitational waves suggested that the cosmos abounds with unexpectedly...

For 80 years, scientists have puzzled over the way galaxies and other cosmic structures appear to gravitate toward something they cannot see. This hypothetical “dark matter” seems to outweigh all visible matter by a startling ratio of five to one...