{"id":793652,"date":"2025-02-17T03:39:05","date_gmt":"2025-02-17T08:39:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/?p=793652"},"modified":"2025-02-17T03:39:05","modified_gmt":"2025-02-17T08:39:05","slug":"axions-could-help-solve-physics-dark-matter-problem-short-wave-npr","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/?p=793652","title":{"rendered":"Axions could help solve physics’ dark matter problem : Short Wave : NPR"},"content":{"rendered":"


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\n The combined gravity of all the regular and dark matter trapped inside the cluster shown here warps space-time. It also affects light traveling through the cluster toward Earth, distorting images of the remote galaxies behind the cluster.
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NASA, ESA, and J. Lotz and the HFF Team (STScI)<\/p>\n

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NASA, ESA, and J. Lotz and the HFF Team (STScI)<\/p>\n

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The combined gravity of all the regular and dark matter trapped inside the cluster shown here warps space-time. It also affects light traveling through the cluster toward Earth, distorting images of the remote galaxies behind the cluster.<\/p>\n

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NASA, ESA, and J. Lotz and the HFF Team (STScI)<\/p>\n

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Physics has a bit of a messy problem: There’s matter missing in our universe.<\/p>\n

Something is there that we can’t see, but scientists can detect.<\/em><\/p>\n

“When we look at how stars move in galaxies, they move as if there is a lot of matter there that we can’t see,” says Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, a theoretical particle physicist at the University of New Hampshire. <\/p>\n

This missing matter is often called called dark matter. It makes up over a quarter of the matter in the universe. <\/p>\n

Scientists don’t know what it is. <\/p>\n

Yet scientists do know that whatever this matter is has to have a few key components: <\/p>\n