Sunday, October 23, 2011

Apod 1.8

This weeks picture is from Oct. 17th and shows a galaxy cluster where one galaxy appears to be curved on the right side of the picture. The galaxy cluster shown is MACS1206 and what we are seeing is a "gravitational lens". The gravitational distortion of light is caused by the galaxy's, the one in the back of the galaxy cluster,  light having to bend around multiple areas of heavy gravity which the scientist at NASA theorize is Dark Matter in this case. Dark Matter is substance that we have just recently discovered and we have also found out that most of the universe is composed of dark matter. The actual composition of dark matter is unknown but many theorize that is made up of exotic particles that allow for dark matter to have the gravitational pull that it does.
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap111017.html

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