New research reveals how dark matter can behave in a cluster of galaxies, especially when these clusters collide with each other. These findings offers new insight into how deeply complex dark matter's nature is from what is currently believed.

Scientists used data from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and the Chandra X-ray Observatory when they discovered that dark matter apparently doesn't slow down when it interacts or collides with itself. Researchers now believe that since it rarely interacts with itself, this can narrow down dark matter's characteristics.

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Scientists believe dark matter makes up most of the mass of the universe. It's not visible since it doesn't reflect light or even absorbs or emits light.

Dark matter can only be detected indirectly by measuring how much it warps space, a phenomenon made visible by gravitational lensing that magnifies and distorts light due to dark matter's powerful gravitational forces.

In this study, Hubble mapped the distribution of stars and dark matter after a stellar collision detected due to a gravitational lensing effect from the background light of the collision. Chandra detected its X-ray emissions and confirmed its presence from the gas cloud collision.

Galaxy clusters are made up of galaxies, gas clouds and dark matter. When they all collide, the gas clouds surrounding the galaxies crash into each other and either slow down in circulation or ultimately stop.

The galaxies, however, aren't significantly affected by the collisions since they possess large gaps between them and the stars.

The team discovered that dark matter is less likely affected by these collisions and isn't even slowing down. This leads to the idea that dark matter doesn't totally interact with visible particles surrounding it, which was the previous theory.

If dark matter were to collide into other dark matter during the collision, the movement of the galaxies could have shifted significantly.

This discovery has been pivotal in narrowing down the properties of dark matter. Particle theorists now possess a smaller set of unknowns to work with when it comes to building their dark matter models.

Dark matter could possess rich and complex elements and properties but there are several other interactions in theory. These latest results confirm that dark matter doesn't slow down during collisions even if there are powerful frictional forces around them.

This study was published in the journal, Science.

TagsColliding Galaxies Reveal Secret Properties of Dark Matter, dark matter, hubble telescope, chandra telescope, NASA, dark matter collisions galaxies cluster mirror universe, galaxies collisions