The Bullet Cluster, named for its distinctive shape, has long been considered a smoking gun for the existence of dark matter in space.
(Sorry, couldn’t resist the pun.)
But the James Webb Space Telescope, a partnership of NASA and its European and Canadian counterparts, has now traced that hidden material with unprecedented precision. In new images, such as the one displayed at the top of this story, scientists have obtained the most detailed information yet on the notorious cosmic collision between two massive groups of galaxies, 3.8 billion light-years away in the Carina constellation.
What makes this cluster famous isn’t the violence of it all. It’s that the crash stripped the visible matter, such as hot gas, from the dark matter, a mysterious-yet-abundant substance that doesn’t shine or interact with light. This unseen material stealthily shapes galaxies.
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