“The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are.” –Joseph Campbell
Making up some 85% of the mass in our Universe, dark matter is necessary to explain the motions of individual galaxies, the grouping and clustering of assemblies of galaxies, the large-scale structure of the Universe and more. But on a much closer-to-home level, dark matter may be absolutely essential to the origin of life, too!
Image credit: ESO/L. Calçada, of the illustration of the dark matter halo surrounding the luminous disk of our galaxy.
Without dark matter, supernova explosions and starburst events would still create copious amounts of heavy elements, driven outwards by winds and the force of the explosions. But it’s the extra gravity of the dark matter that prevents most of this material from escaping, and allows it to take part in the formation of future generations of stars, to participate in rocky planet formation, and to deliver the ingredients necessary for life.
The Cigar Galaxy, M82, and its supergalactic winds that would drive all this matter out of the galaxy itself, were it not for dark matter. Image credit: NASA, ESA, The Hubble Heritage Team, (STScI / AURA); Acknowledgement: M. Mountain (STScI), P. Puxley (NSF), J. Gallagher (U. Wisconsin).
Go get the whole, detailed story today, and find out why life needs dark matter to exist after all!
from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/1YwzVr6
“The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are.” –Joseph Campbell
Making up some 85% of the mass in our Universe, dark matter is necessary to explain the motions of individual galaxies, the grouping and clustering of assemblies of galaxies, the large-scale structure of the Universe and more. But on a much closer-to-home level, dark matter may be absolutely essential to the origin of life, too!
Image credit: ESO/L. Calçada, of the illustration of the dark matter halo surrounding the luminous disk of our galaxy.
Without dark matter, supernova explosions and starburst events would still create copious amounts of heavy elements, driven outwards by winds and the force of the explosions. But it’s the extra gravity of the dark matter that prevents most of this material from escaping, and allows it to take part in the formation of future generations of stars, to participate in rocky planet formation, and to deliver the ingredients necessary for life.
The Cigar Galaxy, M82, and its supergalactic winds that would drive all this matter out of the galaxy itself, were it not for dark matter. Image credit: NASA, ESA, The Hubble Heritage Team, (STScI / AURA); Acknowledgement: M. Mountain (STScI), P. Puxley (NSF), J. Gallagher (U. Wisconsin).
Go get the whole, detailed story today, and find out why life needs dark matter to exist after all!
from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/1YwzVr6
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