Astronomers find hints supermassive black holes hold dark matter clusters
Technology
Astronomers have found hints that supermassive black holes, like the one at the center of our galaxy, could be surrounded by clusters of dark matter.
Dark matter is invisible and doesn't interact with light, but scientists think it makes up most of the universe's mass.
Reverberation mapping finds hidden mass
Using a method called reverberation mapping (which tracks how light bounces off gas near black holes), researchers studied 14 galaxies and noticed extra mass in five of them.
This suggests there could be hidden material, possibly dark matter, around these massive black holes.
The study, with Mayank Sharma, a physics graduate student at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech), opens up a new way to look for dark matter in space.