Dark Matter Core Defies Explanation


It was the result no one wanted to believe. Astronomers have observed what appeared to be a clump of dark matter left behind during a bizarre wreck following a collision between massive clusters of galaxies.


The dark matter appears to have collected into a "dark core" while most of the galaxies seemed to have moved on, sailing past the collision site. This result could present a challenge to basic theories of dark matter, which predict that galaxies should be anchored to the invisible substance, even during the shock of a collision.

The initial detection, made in 2007, was so unusual that astronomers shrugged them off as unreal because of the signal's moderate significance. The observational program that led to the 2007 discovery, the Canadian Cluster Comparison Project (CCCP), was conceived at University of Victoria and the first set of observations were carried out at the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope. For Arif Babul of the University of Victoria, who co-led the CCCP, "the results were both intriguing and exciting but also engendered justified skepticism, the main criticism being that the clump of dark matter was an artifact of ground based observations, though we confirmed the CFHT results using observations from the Japanese Subaru telescope".

However, new results from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope confirm that dark matter and galaxies parted ways in the gigantic merging galaxy cluster called Abell 520, located 2.4 billion light-years away.

Now, astronomers are left with the challenge of trying to explain dark matter's seemingly oddball behavior in this cluster.

"This result is a puzzle," said astronomer James Jee of the University of California, Davis, leader of the Hubble study. "Dark matter is not behaving as predicted, and it's not obviously clear what is going on. Theories of galaxy formation and dark matter must explain what we are seeing."

A paper reporting the team's results has been accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal and is available online.

First detected about 80 years ago, dark matter is thought to be the gravitational "glue" that holds galaxies together. The mysterious invisible substance is not made of the same kind of matter that makes up stars, planets, and people. Astronomers know little about dark matter, yet it accounts for most of the universe's mass.

They have deduced dark matter's existence by observing its ghostly gravitational influence on normal matter. It's like hearing the music but not seeing the band.

One way to study dark matter is by analyzing smashups between galaxy clusters, the largest structures in the universe. When galaxy clusters collide, astronomers expect galaxies to tag along with the dark matter, like a dog on a leash. Clouds of intergalactic gas, however, plow into one another, slow down, and lag behind the impact.

That theory was supported by visible-light and X-ray observations of a colossal collision between two galaxy clusters called the Bullet Cluster. The galactic grouping has become a textbook example of how dark matter should behave.

But studies of Abell 520 showed that dark matter's behavior may not be so simple. The original observations found that the system's core was rich in dark matter and hot gas but contained no luminous galaxies, which normally would be seen in the same location as the dark matter. NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory detected the hot gas. Astronomers used the Canada-France-Hawaii and Subaru telescopes atop Mauna Kea to infer the location of dark matter by measuring how the mysterious substance bends light from more distant background galaxies, an effect called gravitational lensing.

The astronomers then turned Hubble's Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 to help bail them out of this cosmic conundrum. Instead, to their chagrin, the Hubble observations helped confirm the earlier findings. Astronomers used Hubble to map the dark matter in the cluster through the gravitational lensing technique.

"Observations like those of Abell 520 are humbling in the sense that in spite of all the leaps and bounds in our understanding, every now and then, we are stopped cold," explained Babul, the team's senior theorist.

Is Abell 520 an oddball, or is the prevailing picture of dark matter flawed? Jee thinks it's too soon to tell.

"We know of maybe six examples of high-speed galaxy cluster collisions where the dark matter has been mapped," Jee said. "But the Bullet Cluster and Abell 520 are the two that show the clearest evidence of recent mergers, and they are inconsistent with each other. No single theory explains the different behavior of dark matter in those two collisions. We need more examples."

The team has proposed a half-dozen explanations for the findings, but each is unsettling for astronomers. "It's pick your poison," said team member Andisheh Mahdavi of San Francisco State University in California, who led the original Abell 520 observations in 2007. One possible explanation for the discrepancy is that Abell 520 was a more complicated interaction than the Bullet Cluster encounter. Abell 520 may have formed from a collision between three galaxy clusters, instead of just two colliding systems in the case of the Bullet Cluster.

Another scenario is that some dark matter may be what astronomers call "sticky." Like two snowballs smashing together, normal matter slams into each other during a collision and slows down. But dark matter blobs are thought to pass through each other during an encounter without slowing down. This scenario proposes that some dark matter interacts with itself and stays behind when galaxy clusters collide.

A third possibility is that the core contained many galaxies, but they were too dim to be seen, even by Hubble. Those galaxies would have to have formed dramatically fewer stars than other normal galaxies.

The Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope is a joint facility of National Research Council of Canada, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique of France, and University of Hawaii.


Dark Matter and Galaxies Part Ways in Collision between Hefty Galaxy Clusters

The image on top of the picture shows the distribution of dark matter, galaxies, and hot gas in the core of the merging galaxy cluster Abell 520, formed from a violent collision of massive galaxy clusters. it is a composite of the four images shwon below.
The orange colored picture shows the starlight from galaxies, derived from observations by the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope.
The blue colored picture pinpoints the location of most of the mass in the cluster, which is dominated by dark matter. Dark matter is an invisible substance that makes up most of the universe's mass. The dark-matter map was derived from the Hubble Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 observations, by detecting how light from distant objects is distorted by the cluster galaxies, an effect called gravitational lensing.
The green-tinted picture shows regions of hot gas, as detected by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory. The gas is evidence that a collision took place.
The natural-color image of the galaxies was taken with NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and with the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope in Hawaii.
The blend of blue and green in the center of the image reveals that a clump of dark matter resides near most of the hot gas, where very few galaxies are found. This finding confirms previous observations of a dark-matter core in the cluster. The result could present a challenge to basic theories of dark matter, which predict that galaxies should be anchored to dark matter, even during the shock of a collision.

Abell 520 resides 2.4 billion light-years away.

Reference

The ApJ Paper: A Study of the Dark Core in A520 with Hubble Space Telescope: The Mystery Deepens by M.J. Jee et al. is available here (pdf).

Contact

University of Victoria: Arif Babul

Phone: +1-778-668-3963
Email: babul@uvic.ca

CFHT: Christian Veillet

Phone: +1-808-938-3905
Email: veillet@cfht.hawaii.edu