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gamer

Mass map of Abell 1689

Credit: NASA, ESA, E. Jullo (JPL/LAM), P. Natarajan (Yale) and J-P. Kneib (LAM).

This is an image of a galaxy cluster called Abell 1689.

What is a galaxy cluster?

Galaxy clusters are clusters of galaxies.

Galaxies cluster?

Yes they cluster because dark matter is super heavy and has a lot of gravitational pull.

Pockets of dark matter, like that purple cloud, are super duper massive and have exert absolutely enormous amounts of gravitational force. They pull together all those galaxies.

See how the galaxies towards the edge of the purple cloud are stretched?

That's dark matter stretching the space-time continuum with gravitational force! Einstein's Theory of Relativity!

Dark matter accounts for 90ish percent of the mass of the universe. It's heavy and its everywhere.

The purple cloud in the image is a visual representation of the distribution of dark matter in Abell 1689 galaxy cluster.

Although dark matter is completely invisible, the purple in the image is added as an after effect that maps the dark matter, which gives away its hiding spot by having so much darn gravity!

By measuring the gravitational pull of pockets of this invisible substance, we can detect it!

Otherwise, it's completely undetectable!

Scientists don't even really know what it is!

Anyways... there's dark matter everywhere and you can't even see it so maybe there's angels or aliens or something all around you but they're just made of dark matter and not our kind of matter!