Excerpt
SUMMARY: We can't see dark matter, but scientists have made the largest map yet of the invisible material that helps make up the universe. Researchers used a dark energy camera and a large telescope to create a color-coded chart of just a small part of the cosmos. Jeffrey Brown talks to Sean Carroll of the California Institute of Technology about how they did it and why it matters.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): Scientists have announced the creation of the largest map yet of the invisible material that helps make up the universe, what’s known as dark matter.
Jeffrey Brown explores some of the very cosmic questions around this story.
JEFFREY BROWN (NewsHour): That’s worth saying again: We can’t see it, but we can apparently map it. What’s called dark matter is, in fact, everywhere, and it’s believed to play a crucial role in forming and holding together galaxies with its gravitational pull.
In findings announced Monday, researchers used a dark energy camera and a large telescope in Northern Chile to create this color-coded map, showing a small piece of the visible sky. Orange and red areas represent denser concentrations of dark matter. Blue areas are less dense.
And Sean Carroll joins us now to tell us about it. He’s a cosmologist and theoretical physicist at the California Institute of Technology.
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