Holes Punched’ through a Trail of Stars tagged posts

Artist’s impression of dark matter clumps around a Milky Way-like galaxy. These clumps are invisible and can only be detected through their gravitational effect on visible matter. The clumps, also known as subhaloes, come in a range of sizes with the smallest one set by the mass of the yet to be discovered dark matter particle. The more massive the dark matter particle, the slower the dark matter moves, and the easier it is for regions in the early universe to collapse and form small subhaloes. In this work, a tidal stream from a disrupting globular cluster is used to probe their presence. Credit: V. Belokurov, D. Erkal, S.E. Koposov (IoA, Cambridge). Photo: Color image of M31 from Adam Evans. Dark matter clumps from Aquarius, Volker Springel (HITS)