Published in Physics World, 6 Jul 2012
Physicists claim to have reliably detected a mammoth filament of dark matter stretching between two galaxy clusters, for the first time. If the detection is bona fide, it could be one of the best confirmations yet of the “standard model” of the universe’s evolution, the so-called lambda cold-dark-matter (?CDM) model.
The ?CDM model posits that, in the early universe, dark matter was spread out in a web of filaments. Over time, this cosmic web would have helped all the normal “baryonic” matter to clump together, particularly in the regions where its filaments intersected. Today, we see the result of this clumping at the filament intersections: galaxy clusters and, on a smaller scale, individual galaxies and stars. […]
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