Dark matter exists, and a new associate professor at Ohio University helped prove it.
The scientific breakthrough, which was first published in August, is the result of four years of work by astrophysics professor Douglas Clowe and a team of scientists based at the University of Arizona.
The breakthrough took the science world by storm, and was ranked No. 3 in Discover magazine's Top 100 Science Stories of 2006. The decision to demote Pluto from its planet status trailed Clowe's work at No. 10, and only breakthroughs in growing a human liver and alternative energy were ranked higher.
His research is one of the hottest things out there right now
said Ken Hicks, physics professor and leader of the Structure of the Universe project. People have been chasing this holy grail of dark matter trying to figure out if it did exist and how it worked.
The theory of dark matter stems from the fact that there is too much gravity in the universe than visible matter can account for. Either there must be some sort of matter that scientists are unable to detect, or Newton's law of gravity must not be true in all cases.
One of the problems with dark matter is that it is, by definition, impossible to detect, so scientists are hard-pressed to find examples to study. Clowe's research, collected from images from three different telescopes, examined and studied the effects of dark matter on two cluster galaxies that had recently smashed together.
If dark matter didn't exist, after the collision the hot gases in the cluster, which have more mass than the visible matter, would have pulled the visible galaxy along in its wake. However, Clowe's team observed the matter going much faster than the gases after the collision, proving that there had to be some sort of extra matter exerting gravitational force that scientists couldn't see.
It essentially proved that some form of dark matter exists said Clowe. We could no longer have it simply be altered gravity.
The research team used gravitational lensing, a way of observing objects that allows for gravity's bending of light, to gather and analyze their data. This project spent more than 100 hours on the Chandra X-Ray telescope as well as hours on the Hubble telescope to observe the galaxies and obtain the necessary data.
As an OU faculty member, Clowe's further research into dark matter might be part of the Structure of the Universe project, an on-going collaborative research between the astrophysics and nuclear physics department that examines matter at both the molecular and galactic level. The project is in its third year and has brought in $3.2 million in external funding, said James Rankin, interim vice president for research.
Doug's research helps raise OU's research profile among other scientists and students
said Andrea Gibson, director of Research Communication. The word is getting out there about the sort of research we're doing and the type of researchers we're bringing into the university.
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Astrophysics professor Douglas Clowe, who along with a team of scientists made a scientific breakthrough in the existence of dark matter. The discovery was ranked third in a list of top science stories of 2006.
