Latest Meghan Gray Stories

A new map reveals dense pools of invisible matter tipping the scales at 10 trillion times the mass of the sun and housing a cosmic city of ancient galaxies. The map, presented last week at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Austin, Texas, provides indirect evidence for so-called dark matter and how this mysterious substance affects galaxy formation. Scientists theorize that dark matter, considered to make up about 85 percent of the universe's...

Astronomers are using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope to dissect one of the largest structures in the universe as part of a quest to understand the violent lives of galaxies. Hubble is providing indirect evidence of unseen dark matter tugging on galaxies in the crowded, rough-and-tumble environment of a massive supercluster of hundreds of galaxies.Dark matter is an invisible form of matter that accounts for most of the universe's mass. Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys has mapped the...