5We’re Surrounded By a Dark Halo

The Milky Way is embedded in a clump of dark matter that is far larger and more massive than the galaxy itself.

In the late 1960s, astronomer Vera Rubin inferred the presence of these invisible halos around galaxies when she observed that stars near the edge of Andromeda were whipping around the galaxy’s center at speeds that should send them flying off into space. And yet, they weren’t, meaning that some sort of cosmic glue held everything together. That glue, we now know, is dark matter.

RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR