Physics & Math, features and articles | Educational Science

Dec 7, 2018

Physicists Keep Trying — and Failing — to Find Dark Matter in Dark Places

Scientists started watching crystals sparkle in the 1990s. Those crystals sparkled more in the summer, which researchers took as evidence of dark matter. But those scientists were probably wrong, new research suggests. Scientists have very good reason to believe that dark matter exists — that there's some unseen stuff tugging...

Dec 9, 2018

Will Dark Matter Mess with These Ultraprecise Atomic Clocks?

The existence of dark matter is suggested via its gravitational effects on the movements of stars and galaxies. However, it remains a mystery as to what it might be composed of, and projects ranging from the most powerful atom smasher ever built to vats of chilly liquid xenon have failed...

Jan 1, 2019

4 Dark Matter Searches to Watch in 2019

2018 was a big year for dark matter. As usual, astronomers didn't actually find any of the stuff, which is invisible to all our telescopes but appears to make up at least 80 percent of the universe by mass. There were reports of a dark matter hurricane, but we can't...

Jan 2, 2019

Scientists Find the 'Missing' Dark Matter from the Early Universe

Dark matter, it seems, has been clinging to galaxies for a very long time. Most galaxies that existed 10 billion years ago had about as much dark matter as galaxies do today, contradicting earlier studies that suggested less dark matter lurked around galaxies in the early universe. Dark matter was...

Jan 14, 2019

Dark Matter Behaves Differently in Dying Galaxies

Dark matter detectives barely know anything about dark matter, but now they know this: It behaves differently on the fringes of old galaxies than in new ones. Dark matter is the stuff we can't see in the universe. It makes up most of the mass in the universe but doesn't...

Apr 11, 2019

Is Dark Matter Fuzzy?

Physicists have long sought to uncloak dark matter and get an actual look at the mysterious substance that makes up a quarter of the universe. One idea for what's hiding beneath the cloak of invisibility? Many tiny, fuzzy particles that behave like one gigantic particle. But the most recent hunt...

Jul 26, 2019

'Dark Matter Bullets' Could Tear Through the Human Body, Wild New Study Suggests

About a quarter of the universe's mass consists of a mysterious, unseen substance called dark matter. And there's a chance that one form of it could behave like tiny, high-speed projectiles, blasting through human flesh like bullets, a new study suggests. In fact, the dark matter impact would generate so...

Oct 16, 2019

Exotic 'Fuzzy' Dark Matter May Have Created Giant Filaments Across the Early Universe

Dark matter, the mysterious substance making up a quarter of the mass and energy of the universe, might be made from extremely tiny and light particles, new research suggests. This “fuzzy” form of dark matter—called that because these miniscule particles' wavelengths would be smeared out over a colossally huge area—would...

Dec 3, 2019

19 Galaxies Are Apparently Missing Dark Matter. No One Knows Why.

Nineteen newly discovered dwarf galaxies seem to be missing their dark matter, and physicists aren't sure why. The find dramatically increases the number of galaxies that appear to be missing dark matter, the mysterious, invisible stuff that exerts gravitational pull, yet emits no light. Dark matter is thought to be...

Jan 7, 2020

It's Official: Vera Rubin Observatory Named to Honor Dark Matter Scientist

HONOLULU — A U.S. facility designed in part to solve the mysteries of dark matter now officially carries the name of Vera Rubin, the scientist who concluded that the elusive substance must exist. That announcement came Monday (Jan. 6) here, at the 235th meeting of the American Astronomical Society, during...

Jan 21, 2020

Self-destructing dark matter may be flooding the sky with gamma-rays, study suggests

Gamma-rays — the brightest, most powerful light in the universe — sail across the sky invisible to human eyes. These exceptionally energetic bursts of radiation flash out of supernova explosions, spark off of colliding neutron stars, and spew forth from the hungriest black holes. When astronomers can catch them with...

Mar 9, 2020

Did German physicists accidentally discover dark matter in 2014?

Could we have already discovered dark matter? That's the question put forth in a new paper published Feb.12 in the Journal of Physics G. The authors outlined how dark matter might be made of a particle known as the d*(2380) hexaquark, which was likely detected in 2014. Dark matter, which...

Mar 20, 2020

Hunting for dark matter — inside the Earth

Dark matter is a hypothetical component to our universe, used to explain many strange behaviors of stars and galaxies. Despite the almost overwhelming evidence that dark matter does indeed exist, we still don't know what it's made of. Detectors scattered around the world have been operating for decades, trying to...

Mar 27, 2020

Scientists use the Milky Way to hunt for dark matter

Scientists studying a mysterious signal from far-off galaxies didn't find dark matter as they'd hoped. But the inventive new technique they used to detect this strange signal, which uses our own galaxy to hunt for dark matter, could elevate the hunt for the elusive material. For decades, scientists have been...

Apr 29, 2020

A long-lost type of dark matter may resolve the biggest disagreement in physics

One of the deepest mysteries in physics, known as the Hubble tension, could be explained by a long-since vanished form of dark matter. The Hubble tension, as Live Science has previously reported, refers to a growing contradiction in physics: The universe is expanding, but different measurements produce different results for...