Astronomers Have Discovered An Invisible, Dark Matter Galaxy

The ALMA (Atacama Large Millimeter Array) has taken an image with slight distortions. That, in and of itself, is not too badly exciting, although these alteration points towards a secret galaxy (a dark dwarf galaxy) comprising mostly dark matter, the dark matter that looks to be one of the two missing partsof our universe. ALMA captured the image below, displayed pale red arcs neighboring a galaxy (viewable in blue light below) almost 4 billion light-years away. The alterations of light are deliberated to have been generated by the gravitational force from the dwarf dark galaxy right behind it.

NASA explains, “We are much more certain what dark matter is not than we are what it is.” We definitely know that dark matter does not absorb or discharge light, making it totally invisible to our telescopes as of now and even though we have no known methods of viewing dark matter, all matter has gravitational force, which has an influence on nearby matter (even light). As forecast by Einstein’s theory of general relativity, the gravitational forces of definite entities modify light and cause a lensing effect, which is called as gravitational lensing. This provides hints about adjacent galaxies, even when they are very far away or, in this situation, invisible. 

We can spot these invisible objects in the same precise way that you can see rain drops on a window. You know they are there because they modify the image of the background objects. 

The study proposes that we may have not been seeing most of dwarf galaxies because they are made up usually of dark matter.

For almost 2 decades, researchers have been seeing same type of distortions but called them as “discrepancies.” This finding could clarify those unwrap possibilities and discrepancies for ALMA to discover similar objects for difference as well as help astronomers find out more about dark matter.