Cosmology News

While concerned with massive objects such as neutron stars and black holes in her work, Martyna Chruslinska loves the lightweight feeling of figure skating in her spare time. more

Dark matter, which makes up over 80% of the mass in the Universe, does not absorb or emit light, interacting with light and normal (baryonic) matter only through its gravitational pull. The nature of dark matter is one of the major open questions in astrophysics and cosmology. One theoretical model for dark matter, known as fuzzy dark matter (FDM), is predicted to leave a very specific imprint on light that is bent around a massive galaxy in a phenomenon called gravitational lensing. By examining the radio light in a gravitational lens system observed at extremely high angular resolution, we have determined just how “fuzzy” the dark matter can be. more

The universe today is host to a vast network of galaxies and an even richer array of invisible dark matter structures. But this was not always the case. The universe was nearly uniform until a time of about 100 million years, when the first cosmic structures gravitationally condensed. These objects were made of dark matter alone and each may have weighed no more than the Earth. Most of these objects do not last long: they rapidly grow and cluster together to form the much larger systems that we know today. Despite this, scientists at MPA have discovered in high-resolution simulations that some unique features of the first structures survive this process. Their lingering imprint could manifest itself in astronomical observations, yielding clues to the identity of dark matter. more

The Nishina Memorial Foundation announced this week that Professor Eiichiro Komatsu, director at the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics, receives the most prestigious Japanese physics award. The Nishina Memorial Prize is presented annually, honoring outstanding Japanese scientists who have made substantial contributions to physics research. Komatsu receives the prestigious award for his “contributions to the standard cosmology based on the cosmic microwave background”. The award will be presented during a ceremony in Tokyo on 6 December 2022. more

Galaxies are embedded in large reservoirs of gas - mostly hydrogen and helium. This hydrogen gas has been found to glow faintly in a specific ultraviolet wavelength, or color, called Lyman-alpha. Scientists at the MPA have discovered that these Lyman-alpha halos are larger than previously thought, spanning several 100,000 light years. The inferred size and shape of the halos suggest that the light in the outer parts of the halos comes from surrounding galaxies or the gas in their environments rather than from the central galaxy itself. more