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The astronomers used a phenomenon “gravitational lensing”, predicted by Albert Einstein to probe an area of the sky nine times the size of the full moon. This phenomenon of gravitational lensing occurs when light from far away galaxies is bent by the gravitational influence of matter en route.
The astronomers exploited the technique by observing the distorted light from the far away galaxies to reconstruct the missing mass which remained hidden from the probing conventional telescopes.
Dr Richard Massey of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, one of the lead scientists in the team said: “We have, for the first time, mapped the large scale distribution of dark matter in the universe.”
“Dark matter is a mysterious and invisible form of matter, about which we know very little, yet it dominates the mass of the universe,” Dr Massey said. One of the most important findings of this study is that dark matter appears to form an invisible skeleton around which the visible universe is superimposed. all this proves the theoretical calculations made so far.
“A filamentary web of dark matter is threaded through the entire universe, and acts as scaffolding within which the ordinary matter- including stars, galaxies and planets - can later be built. Dr Massey said. “The most surprising aspect of our map is how unsurprising it is. Overall, we seem to understand really well what happens during the formation of structure and the evolution of the universe,” he said.
Further research would reveal the intricacies of matter and thereby of time. We have to wait till that.
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