All galaxies, including our own Milky Way, contain dark matter. But how much dark matter does the Milky Way have? This is a question that does not have a definite answer; turns out you can’t just weigh the galaxy on a scale and record the mass of dark matter. But that hasn’t stopped astronomers from…Continue Reading Sizing from the Smallest Scales: The Mass of the Milky Way
Physicists could justly be accused of living in a bit of a fantasy world. As every student encountering physics for the first time knows, very little gets done unless we assume that friction does not exist, objects are perfectly shaped blocks or balls, and collisions release no energy in the form of sound or heat….Continue Reading Exploring the Messy Reality of Defective Crystals
Dark Matter More than 80 years ago, the German physicist Fritz Zwicky theorized the existence of an invisible substance whose gravity holds galaxies together. He called it Dunkle Materie: Dark Matter – and to this day we have no great theory for what it might be. We have written about dark matter on our blog…Continue Reading Could Gamma Rays Shed Light on Dark Matter?