WHAT IS THE


MATTER 


WITH DARK 


MATTER?


-Vaishnav 

                                                                 

It was 1933, and Swiss astronomer Fritz Zwicky noticed something out of the ordinary. He noticed galaxies moving much faster than their mass would logically allow. He thought that there had to be something producing extra mass that could aid in this phenomenon.

To understand this think of our galaxy as a merry-go-round that all the stars are riding, if the star wants to hold tight and avoid being thrown out, it needs heavy gravitational power that acts like a rope to keep revolving in its own orbit. Every large galaxy has a supermassive black hole at its center that keeps all of the galaxy's objects  in its own orbit. However, if we move further away from the black hole, the effect of gravity will decrease. Here is where the theory of dark matter comes into play. The objects that are far away from the black hole have the same speed as the objects revolving near the black hole. We can say that dark matter gives extra mass and gravitational power, which is sufficient for the objects to revolve in their orbit without scattering in space.

   


Figure 1

Dark matter does not emit, absorb, or reflect light, making it invisible to telescopes. However, its presence can be inferred through its gravitational effects on visible matter, such as stars and galaxies. Scientists think it makes up about 27% of everything in the universe! That's a lot! They have some ideas about what dark matter might be made of, like weak particles or axions, but they haven't found any proof yet. Imagine you have a puzzle and you need to put all the pieces together to make a picture. That is the simplest way to explain an axion. Consider that a piece of the puzzle is missing, but you know it's there because the other pieces fit together perfectly. That's similar to axions. So axions can't be seen or touched, but they have an effect on other things in the space.

To conclude , dark matter remains one of the greatest mysteries in modern physics, and scientists continue to search for ways to directly detect and study this invisible form of matter. Understanding the nature and properties of dark matter will not only deepen our understanding of the universe but also have important implications for a range of fields, including cosmology, astrophysics, and particle physics.

                                                                          

 

 

Concise yet informed! WRITTEN for quick absorption to engage even the briefest of attention spans!