This invisible mass of matter is estimated to be about 10 million times the mass of the sun.
A huge cluster of dark matter could be at our galactic gates.
Scientists have discovered the presence of an invisible and massive nugget in the galactic neighborhood of the Sun. The clod suspected of dark matter has a mass about 10 million times that of the sunthe researchers report on January 29 in Physical Examination Letters.
Dark matter is an unidentified substance, evident only by its impact on the cosmos. The Milky Way is enveloped in an enormous “halo” of dark matter, and scientists suspect that countless small clusters, called “subhalos,” reside inside. They now have a candidate, located about a kiloparsec from the sun, or about 3,260 light years.
Scientists spotted the inconspicuous object by monitoring the remnants of dead stars called pulsars, which send out bursts of radio waves at a steady pace. Tracking changes in pulse rate over time allows scientists to perform various analyses. measurements of the cosmos.
Of the 53 pulsars the researchers studied, a pair of neighboring pulsars showed signs of a change in their pulse rate that indicated a gravitational pull exerted by something massive. To estimate the mass of the object, the researchers included additional pulsars near the original pair, for a total of 19 pulsars. Notably, there were no nearby stars or gas clouds that could explain the observations, leaving dark matter as the likely culprit.
Different dark matter theories predict different distributions of dark matter subhaloes. So if scientists could map all of the Milky Way’s subhaloes, it could pin down the nature of dark matter, says astrophysicist Sukanya Chakrabarti of the University of Alabama in Huntsville. “That’s the end goal. That’s what we’re looking for.”