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The School Newspaper of Franklin High School

Pantherbook

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The School Newspaper of Franklin High School

Pantherbook

The School Newspaper of Franklin High School

Pantherbook

Mystery of Dark Matter: Solved?

Scientists have begun saying that the largest cluster of galaxies known to man, El Gordo, could one day reveal the secret to the universes dark matter.

El Gordo, which means ‘the big one” in Spanish, is over seven billion light years from earth. The gluster of galazies is said to be 13.7  billion years old and 2 quadrillion times the size of the sun. El Gordo was discovered using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory in space and the Atacama Cosmology Telescope in Chile.

It was discovered that dark matter makes up 73 percent of the mass in the entire universe and is driving the accelerated expansion of the universe. The unseen and unidentified dark matter makes up only 23 percent. Scientists were able to discover the  23 percent of matter because of the gravitational effect it has on our planet.

Galaxies clusters form when smaller galazies clump together. Being able to do so means that each galazy has a certain amount of dark matter and dark energy. Scientists believe that using this information they could discover what truly makes up dark matter.

“Gigantic galaxy clusters like this are just what we were aiming to find. We want to see if we understand how these extreme objects form using the best models of cosmology that are currently available,” said the study lead author Felipe Menanteau of Rutgers University.

It is believed that further research into El Gordo could initially tell us about how dark matter seperates from the gas around El Gordo giving us key details about the nature of dark matter.