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Article: CONTINUATION: Scientists create the first image of dark matter ; A COSMIC BREAKTHROUGH
- Article from:
- The Independent (London, England)
- Article date:
- January 8, 2007
CopyrightCopyright 2007 The Independent - London. Provided by ProQuest LLC. (Hide copyright information)
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the distorted light from half a million faraway galaxies to
reconstruct some of the missing mass of the universe which is
otherwise invisible to conventional telescopes.
"We have, for the first time, mapped the large-scale distribution
of dark matter in the universe," said Richard Massey of the
California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, one of the lead
scientists in the team. "Dark matter is a mysterious and invisible
form of matter, about which we know very little, yet it dominates
the mass of the universe."
One of the most important discoveries to emerge from the study is
that dark matter appears to form an invisible scaffold or skeleton
around which the visible universe has formed.