{"id":249030,"date":"2025-10-24T17:16:13","date_gmt":"2025-10-24T17:16:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/249030\/"},"modified":"2025-10-24T17:16:13","modified_gmt":"2025-10-24T17:16:13","slug":"astronomers-just-found-something-that-weighs-a-million-suns-and-is-completely-invisible","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/249030\/","title":{"rendered":"Astronomers Just Found Something That Weighs a Million Suns\u2014and Is Completely Invisible"},"content":{"rendered":"

“Hearst Magazines and Yahoo may earn commission or revenue on some items through these links.”<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s what you\u2019ll learn when you read this story:<\/p>\n

Gravitational lensing is one of the few methods scientists have to search for elusive dark matter, which famously doesn\u2019t interact with the electromagnetic force like normal matter.<\/p>\n

A new study using the elliptical galaxy B1938+666 as a gravitational lens reports the discovery of the lowest-mass dark matter clump ever.<\/p>\n

Although still incredibly massive\u2014roughly one million solar masses\u2014it\u2019s still 100 times less massive than the previous record holder.<\/p>\n

For nearly a century, finding evidence of dark matter<\/a> has been top priority for astronomers and particle physicists alike. The urgency makes sense because according to the Lambda cold dark matter<\/a> (\u039bCDM) theory\u2014our best guess at the machinations of the Big Bang cosmology and universal structures\u2014dark matter forms the theory\u2019s very foundation (hence the name) and contains roughly 10 times more mass than normal matter throughout the universe.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s just one problem\u2014dark matter doesn\u2019t directly interact with electromagnetic force<\/a> like normal matter. However, dark matter does interact gravitationally, primarily through a method known as gravitational lensing<\/a>. Using this technique, an international team of scientists believe they\u2019ve spotted the lowest mass \u201cdark object\u201d ever detected using gravitational lensing. Of course, by \u201clowest\u201d we still mean incredibly massive by comparison\u2014about one million solar masses.<\/p>\n

The team reported the results in two companion studies in Nature Astronomy<\/a> and Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society<\/a>. \u201cHunting for dark objects that do not seem to emit any light is clearly challenging,\u201d Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics\u2019s Devon Powell, lead author of the Nature Astronomy study, said in a press statement. \u201cSince we can\u2019t see them directly, we instead use very distant galaxies as a backlight to look for their gravitational imprints.\u201d<\/p>\n

To achieve this, Powell and his team relied on a massive elliptical galaxy called B1938+666, which acts as a gravitational lens for even more distant galaxies. Discovered as part of the Jodrell Bank-VLA Astrometric Survey (JVAS) and the Cosmic Lens All Sky Survey (CLASS)\u2014a dedicated search for gravitational lenses\u2014in the 1990s, B1938+666 was also the first Einstein Ring<\/a> ever discovered (though, as its name suggests, Einstein theorized this kind of ring decades earlier). Einstein rings are a kind of useful cosmic mirage as a massive galaxy in the foreground bends the light emitted from another galaxy in the background, forming a kind eerie halo around when perfectly aligned.<\/p>\n

\"gravitational<\/p>\n

European Space Agency<\/p>\n

In this new study, astronomers relied on multiple radio telescopes, including the Green Bank Telescope, the Very Long Baseline Array, and the European Very Long Baseline Interferometric Network to form what they called an \u201cEarth-sized super-telescope.\u201d Using this \u201csuper-telescope,\u201d astronomers were able to detect a subtle wobble within the arc of radio waves that form the Einstein ring, likely caused by an unexplained gravitational disturbance.<\/p>\n

\u201cFrom the first high-resolution image, we immediately observed a narrowing in the gravitational arc, which is the tell-tale sign that we were onto something.\u201d University of Groningen\u2019s John McKean, lead author of the Monthly Notices study, said in a press statement. \u201cOnly another small clump of mass between us and the distant radio galaxy could cause this.\u201d<\/p>\n

The team concluded the mass of the \u201cdark object\u201d must be around one million times that of the Sun (which is, amazingly, 100 times smaller than the previous record holder) and is located some 10 billion light-years from Earth. \u039bCDM suggests that even our own Milky Way should be filled with these dark matter clumps, but theoretical suggestions and empirical evidence are two very different things\u2014and it\u2019s not a very easy chasm to bridge.<\/p>\n

\u201cGiven the sensitivity of our data, we were expecting to find at least one dark object, so our discovery is consistent with the so-called \u2018cold dark matter theory\u2019 on which much of our understanding of how galaxies form is based,\u201d Powell said in a press statement. \u201cHaving found one, the question now is whether we can find more and whether their number will still agree with the models.\u201d<\/p>\n

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