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Even if one could somehow devise the scientific and technological means to travel at The vastness of the Milky Way <keyword id="55852" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="galaxy" source="Orion">galaxy</keyword> renders our solar system as a negligible smudge amidst cosmic dust. Comparable is the effect of gargantuan galaxy clusters, the largest gravity-tethered objects in the universe, on mere galaxies. Presently, scientists have identified a particularly remarkable one among these colossal entities.<br /><br />An international team of astronomers has stumbled upon an extensive galaxy structure named "<keyword id="19530462" type="General" weightage="100" keywordseo="cosmic-vine" source="Orion">Cosmic Vine</keyword>," measuring approximately 13 million light-years in length and encompassing at least 20 massive galaxies!<br /><br />The structure was observed at a redshift of 3.44, signifying its appearance when the universe was merely a 2.5 billion-year-old infant. To provide context, current methods estimate the universe's age at 13.7 billion years.<br /><br />Cosmic Vine stands out as an exceptionally lengthy and vast structure, surpassing the size of other known compact galaxy groups and proto-clusters at similar redshifts. Additionally, it harbors two of the most massive galaxies ever discovered at such a high redshift—Galaxy A and Galaxy E, both in a quiescent state, indicating a reduced rate of <keyword id="2672302" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="star-formation" source="Orion">star formation</keyword>.<br /><br />The significance of uncovering Cosmic Vine lies in the new perspectives it offers on the formation and evolution of massive galaxies. Researchers believe that the Vine might serve as the precursor to a <keyword id="2056637" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="galaxy-cluster" source="Orion">galaxy cluster</keyword>, providing insights into the formation of such clusters and the emergence of massive galaxies within them.<br /><cmsannotation type="cmsannotation" annotationid="Repercussions for Galaxy Formation" comment="subhead" text="Repercussions for Galaxy Formation"><span data-til="noop">Repercussions for Galaxy Formation</span></cmsannotation><br />The identification of Cosmic Vine implies that massive quiescent galaxies can form within expanding large-scale structures, contrary to some prior models suggesting their exclusive formation in the cores of mature galaxy clusters.<br /><br />Researchers also propose that Galaxy A and Galaxy E were likely subdued by substantial energy releases from a supermassive black hole before inevitably succumbing to the Vine's core. This implies that the quenching process, which halts star formation in galaxies, can transpire in various environments, not solely within the cores of galaxy clusters.<br /><br />To gain a deeper understanding of the formation of these giants, further examination of quiescent cluster galaxies at high redshifts is imperative. Fortunately, the recently launched <keyword id="17888856" type="General" weightage="50" keywordseo="euclid-space-telescope" source="Orion">Euclid Space Telescope</keyword>, designed to investigate the structure and history of large-scale structures in the universe, holds promise in advancing this research.<br /><br />The research findings have been published in a preprint journal and can be accessed <a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.2311.04867" data-type="tilCustomLink">here</a>.<br />

Scientists uncover enormous cosmic structure containing a whopping 20 galaxies!

The Euclid space telescope's first images show distant, hidden, and irregular galaxies that could help solve 2 of astronomy's grandest mysteries

<ul class="summary-list"><li>The European Space Agency joined in on the jokes around Wednesday's launch of Threads.</li><li>In a post tagging Mark Zuckerberg, the ESA said: "Do you want to start making rockets?"</li></ul><p>The European Space Agency joined in on all the memes and jokes around Wednesday's launch of Threads – the new Twitter competitor app from Meta.</p><p>The account, which currently has 122,000 followers on the new app, tagged Mark Zuckerberg in a <a href="https://www.threads.net/t/CuWbmzbMS6E/?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA%3D%3D" target="_blank" rel="noopener">post</a> that asked: "Do you want to start making rockets?"</p><p>That quip earned almost 4,000 likes in 24 hours, and seemingly pokes fun at both the Meta CEO and Elon Musk. </p><p>The ESA has done several launches with Musk's SpaceX, including with its Euclid space telescope on a Space X Falcon 9 rocket on <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2023/7/4/23783648/euclid-space-telescope-esa-dark-matter-dark-energy-explain">Saturday</a>. </p><p>The success of Meta's Threads, which had already reached 30 million users <a href="https://www.standard.co.uk/news/world/threads-twitter-meta-facebook-instagram-app-mark-zuckerberg-b1092772.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">as of Thursday morning</a>, may have some questioning if Zuckerberg can do well in other fields too.</p><p>After all, Musk isn't the only billionaire with a rocket company – Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson have also made trips to space. </p><p>Or, the post might just be poking fun at Zuckerberg's <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-copycat-zuckerberg-build-twitter-empire-2023-5">app being a Twitter copycat</a>.</p><p>Even before Threads — which has <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/twitter-lawsuit-meta-hiring-former-staff-elon-musk-fired-employees-2023-7">prompted Musk's lawyer to send a cease-and-desist letter</a> threatening legal action, accusing it of being a "copycat" — Meta implemented its stories feature similar to Snapchat's. </p><p>Plus <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/tiktok-videos-on-instagram-reels-facebook-copycat-2021-9">Instagram's reels took off shortly after TikTok gained popularity</a>.</p><p>Either way, the space agency is one of the first companies to gain attention on Threads.</p><p>The ESA declined to comment when contacted by Insider.</p>

The European Space Agency jokingly asks Mark Zuckerberg if he will start making rockets like Elon Musk after Threads launch

<ul class="summary-list"><li>The <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/spacex-astronaut-thomas-pesquet-gorgeous-photos-from-space-2021-11">European Space Agency</a> said on Thursday it's suspending an <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/sanctions-to-likely-delay-launch-of-european-russian-mars-mission-2022-3">upcoming Mars mission</a> with <keyword id="11894337" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="russia" source="Orion">Russia</keyword>.</li><li>The ESA was set to cooperate with <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/history-of-russia-space-chief-elon-musk-spacex-rivalry-tweets-2022-3">Russia</a> for a September launch to send a <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasas-perseverance-rover-may-find-false-fossils-on-mars-2021-11">rover</a> to <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-not-enough-people-for-mars-population-twitter-2022-1">Mars</a>. </li></ul><p>The European <keyword id="11895441" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="space" source="Orion">Space</keyword> Agency said on Thursday it's suspending an upcoming Mars mission with Russia due to the nation's ongoing assault against <keyword id="11985141" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="ukraine" source="Orion">Ukraine</keyword>. </p><p>After meeting in Paris on Wednesday and Thursday to discuss the impact of Russia's war on Ukraine, the ESA said it would be unable to cooperate with Russian space agency Roscosmos in the upcoming ExoMars rover mission. The mission aims to search for signs of ancient Mars life and drill into the planet to collect samples up to 6 feet below the surface.</p><p>The rover was designed to launch on a Russian Proton rocket and land on Mars atop a Russian <keyword id="11896083" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="science" source="Orion">science</keyword> platform — both integral elements of a Mars mission.</p><p>"We deeply deplore the human casualties and tragic consequences of the aggression towards Ukraine," the ESA said in a <a href="https://www.esa.int/Newsroom/Press_Releases/ExoMars_suspended">statement</a>.</p><p>It added: "While recognizing the impact on scientific exploration of space, ESA is fully aligned with the sanctions imposed on Russia by its Member States."</p><p>ExoMars is a <a href="https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Human_and_Robotic_Exploration/Exploration/ExoMars">two-pronged</a> space exploration mission. The ESA first sent an orbiter to Mars in 2016. The rover was slated to launch in September 2022, but now it's on hold as the agency assesses its options.</p><p>In an ESA council meeting on Thursday, the agency's director of human and robotic exploration, David Parker, said that a 2024 launch is still possible if cooperation with Roscosmos can resume later, according to <a href="https://twitter.com/jeff_foust/status/1504478601239928835">SpaceNews reporter Jeff Foust</a>. Otherwise, Parker said, the agency is looking at a launch in 2026 or later. He added that even some instruments and heating units on the rover itself are from Russia.</p><p>According to <a href="https://twitter.com/jeff_foust/status/1504475648936407047">Foust</a>, ESA officials said they were considering working with NASA on the rover.</p><h2>ESA joins other Western alliances cutting ties with Russia</h2><div type="image" title="cars of evacuees line a road leaving blocks of burnt out destroyed apartment buildings" height="1629" width="2173" msid="90298373" hostid="261"></div><p>There are 22 member states in the ESA, and Ukraine is not one of them. Bordering states Poland, Romania, and Hungary, however, are part of the ESA. </p><p>Russia's war against Ukraine has entered its fourth week, and President Vladimir Putin's forces have largely <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/russia-in-ukraine-largely-stalled-all-fronts-uk-intelligence-says-2022-3">remained stalled</a>. </p><p>The ESA's move comes as a slew of Western countries, alliances, organizations, and corporations have condemned or punished Russia by axing transnational cooperation or slapping sanctions on Russian institutions and oligarchs.</p><h2>Russia's invasion is straining space relations</h2><div type="image" title="soyuz rocket lifts off from launchpad" height="1617" width="2156" msid="90298375" hostid="261"></div><p>Although Roscosmos and NASA continue to collaborate on the International Space Station (ISS), space collaborations are crumbling here on Earth. Many companies and nations rely on Russia's Soyuz and Proton rockets to launch their satellites and other spacecraft into Earth's orbit.</p><p>ESA said Thursday that it was also reassessing launch options for three satellites and its Euclid space telescope, which will study dark matter and dark energy. All four missions were designed to launch aboard Soyuz rockets.</p><p>Those aren't the first missions affected by Russia's war. The launch of a Soyuz rocket carrying OneWeb satellites, scheduled for March 4, was cancelled after Russia demanded that the company promise the satellites would not be used for military purposes.</p><p>Russia has stopped selling and servicing its rocket engines in the US in response to sanctions. Roscosmos Director General Dmitry Rogozin said that US astronauts can fly to the space station on "broomsticks" instead. That comment prompted online taunts from SpaceX CEO Elon Musk. The company's Crew Dragon spaceships already routinely fly astronauts to the ISS, and its Falcon 9 rockets launch satellites even more frequently.</p><div type="image" title="spacex crew dragon spaceship docked to space station" height="1581" width="2108" msid="90298377" hostid="261"></div><p>In addition to Musk, Rogozin has gotten into <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/astronaut-scott-kelly-and-russia-space-chief-trade-twitter-insults-2022-3">Twitter spats with former NASA astronaut Scott Kelly</a> and astronomer <a href="https://twitter.com/Rogozin/status/1501291188850208768">Jonathan McDowell</a>.</p><p>Russia has also announced it will <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/iss-russia-axes-joint-experiments-after-ukraine-invasion-sanctions-2022-3?r=US&amp;IR=T">stop collaborating with Germany</a> on experiments aboard the ISS.</p><p>Otherwise, cooperation continues on the station. On Friday, Russia is launching three cosmonauts to the ISS. <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-astronaut-mark-vande-hei-breaks-scott-kellys-spaceflight-record-2022-3">NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei</a> is scheduled to return to Earth alongside two Russian cosmonauts, aboard a Russian Soyuz spaceship, on March 30.</p>

European Space Agency is suspending its upcoming Mars mission with Russia over Putin's 'aggression' towards Ukraine

<ul class="summary-list"><li>SpaceX's Falcon 9 rockets will be used in two launches by the European Space Agency.</li><li>The ESA previously used Russian rockets, but has cut ties since the invasion of Ukraine.</li></ul><p>Elon Musk's SpaceX will launch two rockets for the European Space Agency after the Ukraine conflict led to the organization severing ties with Russia.</p><p>The ESA's director general, Josef Aschbacher, confirmed on Thursday that it will use SpaceX's Falcon 9 rockets to launch two spacecraft, Euclid and Hera, in 2023 and 2024 respectively, per <a href="https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/spacex-hired-two-european-launches-fill-gap-left-by-russia-2022-10-20/">Reuters</a>.</p><p>The Euclid space telescope — which hopes to allow humans to better understand dark matter, and will orbit near NASA's <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/webbs-pillars-creation-snap-shows-glittering-view-hubble-cant-see-2022-10">James Webb telescope</a> — was supposed to launch this year from Europe's spaceport in French Guiana. </p><p>But after the ESA cut ties with Russia in February, Moscow's space program Roscosmos withdrew its employees from the project, causing a major headache for the ESA.</p><p>"In response to EU sanctions against our enterprises, Roscosmos is suspending cooperation with European partners in organizing space launches," it announced at the time.</p><p>Hera, planned to launch in 2024, will examine the aftermath of NASA's DART mission, which succeeded in <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-confirms-dart-probe-crash-moved-asteroid-2022-10">deflecting an asteroid off course</a> last month. </p><p>While the ESA has its own Ariane 5 rocket for heavy payloads, it has previously depended on Russia's Soyuz system for medium-sized launches such as Hera and Euclid. However, with Roscosmos withdrawing its cooperation, the space agency was forced to look elsewhere.</p><p>Delays to the next-generation Ariane 6 – which was planned to compete with SpaceX and maintain Europe's independence in space  – have also constricted the ESA's plans. </p><p>Reuters <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/exclusive-europe-eyes-spacex-fill-launch-void-left-by-russian-tensions-2022-08-12/">reported in August</a> that discussions had begun with SpaceX, but said at the time Japanese and Indian rockets were also being considered.</p><p>Aschbacher told Reuters: "We of course need to make sure that they are suitable. It's not like jumping on a bus."</p><p>In a <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/7d561078-37c7-4902-a094-637b81a26241">Financial Times interview</a> last year, Aschbacher warned that Europe and the rest of the world was not responding quick enough to the progress being made by the likes of SpaceX, adding that Musk was "making the rules" in space. </p><p>The ESA's choice of SpaceX rockets comes soon after a <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/s?q=starlink#:~:text=Hours%20after%20being%20blasted%20for%20parroting%20Putin%27s%20propaganda%2C%20Elon%20Musk%20says%20he%20is%20%27obviously%27%20pro%2DUkraine%20and%20says%20SpaceX%20has%20spent%20%2480%20million%20on%20Starlink%20in%20the%20country">payment dispute</a> over Musk's Starlink service in Ukraine, which has provided key internet access during the war while normal infrastructure has been offline.</p><p>CNN reported last week that the billionaire had asked the Pentagon to pick up the bill for Starlink, with the bill already surpassing $200 million. Musk has since said he has <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-spacex-starlink-ukraine-pentagon-withdrawn-funding-request-2022-10">withdrawn the request</a>.</p><p>Russian sanctions have also delayed a previously-joint mission to look for signs of life on Mars, initially scheduled for a September launch but now postponed to 2028.</p><p>SpaceX did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Insider on the ESA's use of Falcon 9 rockets.</p>

Europe's space agency is turning to Elon Musk's SpaceX after anti-Russian sanctions left it scrambling for rockets

<ul class="summary-list"><li>For decades, astronomers have puzzled over <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/a-3d-map-of-the-universe-will-unlock-the-mystery-of-dark-energy-2016-7">dark energy</a> and why it's pushing our universe apart.</li><li>New data from the largest 3-D map of our universe suggests we may be wrong about dark energy.</li></ul><p>Scientists have constructed the largest <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/a-3d-map-of-the-universe-will-unlock-the-mystery-of-dark-energy-2016-7">3-D map of our universe</a> to date, and it's come with a couple of interesting surprises.</p><p>"So far, we're seeing basic agreement with our best model of the universe, but we're also seeing some potentially interesting differences," Michael Levi said in a statement released by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory on Thursday.</p><p>Levi is the director for the <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/robots-will-help-us-learn-more-about-dark-energy-and-how-the-universe-formed-2016-8">Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument</a>, DESI, which produced the new map. The instrument consists of 5,000 tiny robots attached to a telescope in Arizona that collects light from various stages of our universe.</p><div type="image" title="Illustration of a telescope looking back in time to the early stages of the universe." height="456" width="810" msid="109077839" hostid="261" sizebytes="47988"></div><p>Astronomers use DESI to look back in time, billions of years ago, to understand how our <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/universe-expansion-crisis-cosmology-new-physics-hubble-constant-2019-10">universe has changed and evolved</a>. One of the driving forces behind that evolution is also one of our age's biggest mysteries in physics: dark energy.</p><p>Dark energy is the name astronomers have given to the unknown force that is driving our <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/universe-younger-expanding-faster-than-thought-study-new-physics-2019-4">universe to expand faster and faster</a> over time. But since its discovery in 1998, dark energy has eluded scientists, who know little about what it is or why it behaves the way it does.</p><p>DESI's detailed map could change that. It suggests that dark energy may be completely different than scientists thought, shaking a foundational pillar of our understanding of the universe.</p><h2>Dark energy may not be Einstein's constant after all</h2><div type="image" title="Millions of galaxies appear as web-like structures" height="685" width="1025" msid="109077842" hostid="261" sizebytes="95268"></div><p>Dark energy, as we understand it right now, is terrifying to think about because it means our universe is expanding faster and faster until one day <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/how-and-when-our-universe-will-end-2017-8">galaxies will be moving away</a> from us so quickly that their points of light in our night sky will wink out of existence.</p><p>That's the future we're headed for if dark energy continues at the rate it's going. And until Thursday, that's what many astronomers thought: that dark energy was a constant, unchanging force.</p><p>That's why astronomers have thought that dark energy could be the same thing as Albert Einstein's "cosmological constant," which was an extension of his theory of general relativity. Einstein abandoned the idea as his "<a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/einstein-biggest-blunder-cosmological-constant-expansion-universe-2017-5">greatest blunder</a>" in the 1930s, as astrophysicist Ethan Siegal <a target="_blank" href="https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/ask-ethan-is-einsteins-cosmological-constant-the-same-as-dark-energy/">explains</a>, but a constant dark energy would have vindicated him.</p><p>However, this mysterious force may not be so constant, after all.</p><div type="image" title="Photo of Albert Einstein on his porch at home in Princeton, New Jersey." height="691" width="662" msid="109077843" hostid="261" sizebytes="26088"></div><p>Preliminary estimates from DESI's new data suggest dark energy may be evolving and weakening. That's the new revelation scientists announced at a meeting of the American Physical Society this week.</p><p>"If true, it would be the first real clue we have gotten about the nature of dark energy in 25 years," Adam Riess, a Nobel laureate for his co-discovery of dark energy, told Quanta Magazine.</p><p>For now, this is just a hint. The data is not strong enough to be sure or to claim a discovery, Quanta reported. But the hint is enticing.</p><p>"The idea that dark energy is varying is very natural," Paul Steinhardt, a Princeton University cosmologist, told the magazine. If it were constant, "it would be the only form of energy we know which is absolutely constant in space and time."</p><p>If later data confirms these early hints of inconstant dark energy to be true, that would change what we know about the makeup and future of the universe. It would also bring scientists closer to solving the mystery of the universe's accelerating expansion.</p><div type="image" title="diagram of the history of the universe" height="1151" width="2048" msid="109077844" hostid="261" sizebytes="89902"></div><p>"If this holds up, it could light the way to a new, potentially deeper <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/the-big-ring-cosmic-discovery-could-rewrite-understanding-of-universe-2024-1">understanding of the universe</a>," Riess said. "The next few years should be very revealing."</p><h2>The 'golden era of cosmology'</h2><p>DESI measured the most distant part of the universe, 8-11 billion years ago, with record precision.</p><p>Other major universe-mapping observatories are hitting the skies in the coming years. The Vera C. Rubin Observatory is about to get outfitted with <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/scientists-built-largest-digital-camera-lsst-for-asteroids-dark-matter-2024-4">the world's largest digital camera</a>, which will allow it to map the entire southern sky over a decade, including more than 20 billion galaxies.</p><div type="image" title="giant camera black segmented tube with lens inside on a white engineering mount in a cleanroom with a person in a white cleansuit standing at the bottom of the lens that rises about five feet above the person's head" height="1500" width="2250" msid="109077845" hostid="261" sizebytes="249196"></div><p>The <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/esa-euclid-space-telescope-images-horsehead-nebula-perseus-cluster-photos-2023-11">European Space Agency's Euclid telescope</a> is already in space, where its mission is to study dark energy. NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is expected to launch in 2027 and conduct its own inquiry on the issue.</p><p>For its part, DESI aims to map 37 million galaxies by the end of its survey.</p><p>"We are in the golden era of cosmology, with large-scale surveys ongoing and about to be started, and new techniques being developed to make the best use of these datasets," Arnaud de Mattia, a researcher with the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA) and co-leader of the DESI team that interprets its cosmological data, said in the press release.</p><p>"We're all really motivated to see whether new data will confirm the features we saw in our first-year sample and build a better understanding of the dynamics of our universe," Mattia said.</p>

The largest map of the cosmos hints that dark energy is changing. It could prove Einstein wrong and upend a pillar of modern physics.

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span><a href="http://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/behemoth-black-hole-found-in-an-unlikely-place">NASA, ESA, and D. Coe, J. Anderson, and R. van der Marel (STScI)</a></span></p><p class="caption">A computer simulation of a black hole.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>In case you haven't heard, there is a very, very big problem with the universe: About 80% of all of the stuff inside it is missing.</p><p>Astronomers call this material "dark matter." They know it's out there because its huge mass tugs on and shapes galaxies, but no one has ever detected the material itself. Aside from exerting a gravitational pull, dark matter doesn't seem to interact with stars, planets, dust, atoms, subatomic particles, or any other "normal" matter as we know it. It's essentially invisible.</p><p>Yet this deep cosmic mystery, which has perplexed scientists for nearly 85 years, may soon be coming to a close - possibly within the next year.</p><p>A group of researchers led by NASA cosmologist <a href="http://www.kashlinsky.info">Alexander Kashlinsky</a> thinks the recent and groundbreaking <a href="http://www.techinsider.io/gravitational-waves-detected-first-time-ligo-2016-2">discovery of gravitational waves</a> could help rule out the idea that dark matter is made of <a href="http://www.techinsider.io/studies-narrowed-the-search-for-dark-matter-2015-8">exotic</a>, <a href="http://www.space.com/33497-dark-matter-search-comes-up-empty-lux-detector.html">hard-to-detect particles</a>.</p><p>Their suspicion: Massive black holes, like the <a href="http://www.techinsider.io/black-hole-collision-energy-50-times-universe-2016-2">two whose collision caused the gravitational waves</a>, are far more common than suspected and might have formed in the first fraction of a second of the Big Bang. That could mean the dark matter that makes up most of our universe is not exotic particles at all. It might simply be black holes.</p><p>If Kashlinksy and his colleagues are correct, the reality may be that four-fifths of matter was gobbled up by black holes at the dawn of the universe, millions of years before the first star was born.</p><p>And there's another uncomfortable facet of this hypothetical reality: A countless number of ancient, greedy cosmic drains are lurking in the blackness of space around us, pulling on "normal" matter like faceless puppeteers.</p><h2>Origins of a dark mystery</h2><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span><a href="http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2008/a1689/">X-ray: NASA/CXC/MIT/E.-H Peng et al; Optical: NASA/STScI</a></span></p><p class="caption">The Coma Cluster of galaxies, also called Abell 1689.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>Fritz Zwicky, an astronomer at at Caltech, first <a href="http://0-www.learner.org.librus.hccs.edu/courses/physics/unit/text.html?unit=10&amp;secNum=2">proposed the idea of dark matter in 1933</a>.</p><p>Zwicky was trying to nail down the motion of a now-famous group of galaxies called the Coma Cluster, which is made of a trillion-or-so stars and exists some 2.2 billion light-years from Earth. To do that he compared two measurements of the cluster: its brightness and how fast its galaxies were moving.</p><p>After Zwicky photographed the cluster with a special telescope that Caltech built for him, he measured the average speed of all those galaxies, which - per <a href="http://www.techinsider.io/einstein-planet-vulcan-myth-relativity-2015-11">Einstein's theory of relativity</a> - gave him the weight of the cluster. Then he compared that data to the cluster's brightness.</p><p>Zwicky was dumbfounded. The cluster was much too dark to explain the motions of all the galaxies; his calculations showed the groups of stars were much too heavy.</p><p>He reasoned that some unseen mass, which he called "dark matter," was lurking in the cluster and bulking it up, thus explaining the discrepancy.</p><p>Researchers ever since have <a href="http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/blog/2009/2/how-we-see-dark-matter">found similar pockets of dark matter</a> all over the universe, lurking at the edges of galaxies in massive "halos" of material and toying with the movement of their stars.</p><p>They've also proposed two powerful ideas to explain what dark matter is - but only one of them might be correct.</p><h2>MACHOS vs. WIMPs</h2><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_hole#mediaviewer/File:PIA16695-BlackHole-Corona-20130227.jpg">NASA/JPL/Caltech</a></span></p><p class="caption">Artist's impression of a black hole.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>Black holes quickly became a prime suspect for being dark matter.</p><p>After all, they don't emit any light and are unbelievably dense and compact - pretty much the perfect objects to secretly exert a powerful gravitational force on visible matter.</p><p>Calculations like Zwicky's suggested they might lurk at the periphery of galaxies in rings, so astronomers came to call them "massive compact halo objects," or MACHOs.</p><p>Scientists figured MACHOs probably formed within a fraction of a second of the Big Bang. This was right as the event's hot, energetic soup of plasma cooled into the first subatomic bits of matter (then eventually into atoms, gases, stars, and so on).</p><p>These primordial black holes would have lurked in the background as the first stars, galaxies, and planets started to form millions of years later, subtly influencing their destinies while vastly outweighing them; for every bright, shining star, four stars' worth of mass was forever locked away in a black hole.</p><p>They also would have left an imprint on the deepest, oldest images of the universe, called cosmic background radiation. The radiation is a faint afterglow of energy left some 400,000 years after Big Bang, when subatomic particles finally condensed into atoms and cooled off a bit (thus emitting all the light we can detect today).</p><p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">But the idea of MACHOs being dark matter soon fell out of favor.</span></p><p>"There was a suggestion made a long time ago about dark matter being lots of black holes formed early on in the universe," Vicky Kalogera, an astrophysicist at Northwestern University, told Tech Insider. "[I]f this were true, we would've seen certain signatures in the cosmic microwave background. We don't see those kind of signatures."</p><p>(The <a href="http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/universe/bb_tests_cmb.html">cosmic microwave background</a>, or CMB, is the best-known radiation fingerprint of the early universe.)</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span><a href="http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap111221.html">ESA, NASA/Hubble</a></span></p><p class="caption">A gravitational lens or "Einstein ring." The blue ring is actually a galaxy behind the red galaxy, which has distorted spacetime and bent the light around it like a lens.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>Researchers have also looked for <a href="http://www.cfhtlens.org/public/what-gravitational-lensing">gravitational lenses</a>, or the warping of space (and light) caused by massive objects like black holes. We've seen plenty of lenses with larger objects, like the galaxies shown above.</p><p>Evidence for "microlensing" that primordial black holes might cause by, say, passing in front of a bright star, <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/41714676_Limits_on_the_Macho_Content_of_the_Galactic_Halo_from_the_EROS-2_Survey_of_the_Magellanic_Clouds">has yet to be found</a>.</p><p>So in recent years, a more popular idea emerged that dark matter could be made of weakly interactive massive particles, or <a href="https://www.astro.umd.edu/~ssm/darkmatter/WIMPexperiments.html">WIMPs</a>: pieces of matter that are incredibly heavy yet frustratingly difficult to detect because they pass through almost all <a href="http://astronomy.swin.edu.au/cosmos/B/baryonic+matter">baryonic</a> (normal) matter like a ghost.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span><a href="http://www.symmetrymagazine.org/article/february-2014/cdms-result-covers-new-ground-in-search-for-dark-matter">Reidar Hahn/Fermilab</a></span></p><p class="caption">Researchers poke their head into a SuperCDMS detector.</p></div><p></p></div></div>But the situation has become increasingly shaky with WIMPs.</p><p>Several ambitious experiments underway right now use <a href="http://cdms.berkeley.edu/experiment.html">supercooled detectors deep underground</a> to hunt for signs of these dark matter particles. But instruments like the LUX experiment, situated far below the the Black Hills of South Dakota, have recently made the news for <a href="http://www.space.com/33497-dark-matter-search-comes-up-empty-lux-detector.html">failing to detect any evidence</a>, even after years of looking.</p><p>"Such searches have been going on for quite some time, but nothing has been reliably detected, slowly shrinking the box of parameters where [dark matter] particles can hide," Kashlinksy wrote in an email.</p><p>Which is why the discovery of gravitational waves got Kashlinksy and his colleagues so excited.</p><h2>Colliding black holes and microlenses</h2><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span><a href="https://www.ligo.caltech.edu/image/ligo20160211d">SXS/LIGO</a></span></p><p class="caption">The collision of two black holes holes-a tremendously powerful event detected for the first time ever by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory, or LIGO-is seen in this still from a computer simulation.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>In February 2016, researchers <a href="http://www.techinsider.io/gravitational-waves-detected-first-time-ligo-2016-2">detected ripples in the fabric of space called gravitational waves</a>, a discovery that, until then, had eluded Earth's brightest minds and most sensitive machines for almost 100 years.</p><p>The cause of the waves? An epic collision of two black holes, one the weight of about 29 suns and the other 36 suns. Some three suns' worth of matter <a href="http://www.techinsider.io/black-hole-collision-energy-50-times-universe-2016-2">instantly turned into gravitational wave energy</a> during the event, warping spacetime in a way that scientists could detect on Earth more than a billion years afterward.</p><p>At the heart of that discovery was the <a href="https://ligo.caltech.edu/">Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO)</a>, a 15-nation, 900-scientist, $1 billion experiment, that has searched for signs of the phenomenon since 2002.</p><p>The size of those black holes - again, about 30 suns' worth of mass - is <a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/1006.2834">supposed to be rare</a>. And that has reinvigorated the idea dark matter is actually made up of MACHOs: a theory that, perhaps, was discounted too quickly.</p><p>Kashlinksy says objects of that size not only fit the bill for MACHO size estimates, but also objects of that size haven't definitively been ruled out in the search for microlenses. What's more, he added, cosmic background radiation data may not be detailed enough to see the disturbances caused by ancient black holes.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span><a href="http://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/nasa-scientist-suggests-possible-link-between-primordial-black-holes-and-dark-matter">NASA/JPL-Caltech/A. Kashlinsky (Goddard)</a></span></p><p class="caption">Ancient black holes may have left their imprint on cosmic background radiation.</p></div><p></p></div></div>"This is like what I show my kids when I make pizza: You spread the dough and suddenly see holes appearing in the dough. That may have happened at very early times," he said, before the first matter began to form.</p><p>Kashlinksy <a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/1605.04023">may have found some hint of those MACHO "dough holes"</a> in the universe's ancient radiation by comparing cosmic infrared background (CIB) maps to cosmic X-ray background (CXB). In short, there is some unexplained patchiness - a possible signature left by primordial black holes.</p><p>A <a href="http://www.techinsider.io/new-gravitational-waves-discovery-2016-6">second discovery of gravitational waves</a>, announced in June 2016, didn't jibe as well with Kashlinksy's theory, since the two colliding black holes - one 8 solar masses, the other 15 - sit near the lower, 10- or 20-solar-mass minimum of what primordial black holes should weigh.</p><p>But this hasn't dissuaded Kashlinksy.</p><p>"There are limits of what primordial black holes could be, on the order of up to 1,000 solar masses," Kashlinksy said. "LIGO black holes fall into this range. Maybe this is what the dark matter is."</p><p>He added: "We should know the answer within a couple of years. LIGO is starting a new run of observations in September. If they keep discovering these beasts at this rate, every one to two weeks, we should have good enough statistics to rule in the possibility."</p><h2>Proving the case</h2><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span><a href="http://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/dark-universe-mission-ready-to-take-shape">ESA/C. Carreau</a></span></p><p class="caption">An illustration of the European Space Agency's Euclid "dark universe" telescope.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>Meanwhile, Kashlinksy and his collaborators are not sitting idly by.</p><p>One idea they've recently proposed may be <a href="http://arxiv.org/abs/1605.00008">a better way to see microlenses</a> caused by black holes formed at the dawn of the universe.</p><p>"If you look at our own galaxy, there should be some 10 to 100 billion primordial black holes. Occasionally some of these should pass in front of a star" and you should see the effect, he said.</p><p>The team is also working on an instrument for a cosmic background telescope called <a href="http://sci.esa.int/euclid/">Euclid</a> that's currently scheduled to launch in 2020.</p><p>The device, called <a href="http://www.euclid.caltech.edu/page/Kashlinsky%20Team">LIBRAE</a>, should be vastly more sensitive than <a href="http://science.nasa.gov/missions/cobe/">COBE - the NASA space telescope</a> that, so far, has recorded the best maps of cosmic background radiation - and create maps fine enough to show those "pizza dough holes" that any primordial black holes left during the early universe.</p><p>Kashlinsky feels strongly that he could be correct about black holes solving the riddle of dark matter, but noted he's "not a betting man."</p><p>"On the dark matter particle side of the spectrum, the range of possibilities is narrowing down quickly," he said. "If nothing is found there, and nothing is found in the black hole theater, then we may be in a crisis of <keyword id="41551" type="ENTERTAINMENT" weightage="100" keywordseo="science">science</keyword>."</p><p><em>Sarah Kramer contributed to this post.</em></p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/astronomers-observed-something-amazing-around-monster-black-hole-2016-6">Astronomers have observed something never seen before around the monster black hole at the center of our galaxy</a></h3>        <div>            <div>        <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="RsdmFjNDE61DrwlE2ZzEi9eIQhMTwltW" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div>        </div>        </div>            </div>

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