A team of scientists from the University of Geneva discovered that dark matter obeys the laws of gravity, in a study that represents “a great step forward” in the description of this “invisible and hypothetical” component of the universe, the teaching center stressed in a statement.
The researchers wanted to check if dark matter, which neither emits nor absorbs light, obeys the same four forces as ordinary matter (gravity, electromagnetism, and strong and weak interactions at the atomic level) or if it is subject to an unknown fifth force.
To do this, they checked whether galaxies, made up mostly of dark matter, fall into gravitational wells (deformations of the universe caused by heavy celestial bodies) in the same way as planets and stars, made of common matter, do.
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Scientists do not rule out an ‘unknown force’ in dark matter
By comparing the speed of the galaxies with the depth of these gravitational wells, they verified that dark matter was subject to the force of gravity in the same way that ordinary matter is.
“In this scenario, even so, these conclusions do not rule out the presence of an unknown force. But if this fifth force exists, it cannot exceed 7% of the force of gravity,” clarified one of the authors of the study published in Nature Communications, Nastassia Grimm.
The next challenge, explained another of the authors, Isaac Tutusaus, will therefore be to determine if there is a fifth force that governs dark matter, five times more abundant in the universe than ordinary matter.
This could be possible, he added, thanks to the Legacy for Posterity Space-Time Research (LSST) at the Rubin Observatory in Chile and the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) in the United States, as they will be sensitive to forces as weak as 2% of gravity.
With information from EFE
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