Proof of Dark Matter gives scientists a warm fuzzy feeling

Sticking with my recent "science in the news" posts:

For years astronomers and scientists have been using this theory of "Dark Matter" in space to help them understand different observations and prove different theories. Only no one had ever been able to scientifically prove the existence of the stuff, which kind of makes one uneasy after basing so many other facts and observations on the assumption that dark matter does exist.

So you could imagine hearing a collective "whew!" throughout the scientific community this Monday when studies of the Bullet Cluster were announced and given as the best evidence to date that dark matter actually exists. Basically, two clusters of galaxies collided and through observing the collision - astronomers had already know what collisions of stars and other previously studied bodies looked like - they detected the dark matter indirectly through gravitational lensing. Kind of cool, right?

So now they've got one thing checked off the to do list. I suppose the next will be, "alright, so we know now that it actually does exist, so now... what is it?"

But that might be a couple years down the road.


Picture is a new photo from NASA showing the Bullet Cluster and what is believed to be dark matter, shown in blue.