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We started our quest in the Cosmology > Dark Matter category of Yahoo!. Although many of the sites here are highly scientific, we found an article titled Dark Matter in the Universe that was fairly accessible to the layperson. It explained that dark matter is the mysterious and theoretical material believed to account for over 90% of the mass of the universe, even though it's invisible: First posited some 60 years ago by astronomer Fritz Zwicky, this so-called missing matter was believed to reside within clusters of galaxies. Nowadays we prefer to call the missing mass "dark matter," for it is the light, not
the matter, that is missing. So, if it can't be seen, why do scientists think dark matter exists? Basically, its presence is inferred by the motion of other objects in the universe, the velocity of galaxies, and the laws of gravity. Though theories abound as to what exactly constitutes dark matter, scientists have identified a couple of serious contenders: - MACHOS (Massive Compact Halo Objects) - objects such as white dwarfs or black holes
- WIMPS
(Weakly Interacting Massive Particles) - subatomic particles such as neutrinos
What a contest! Hopefully, we've shed some light on the matter for you.
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