PHYSICS
Cosmic ‘superbubbles’ might be throwing entire galaxies into chaos
WORDS PAUL SUTTER
A composite image of the superbubble DEM L50, taken by NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory
© Shutterstock /X-ray: NASA;CXC;Univ of Michigan;A.E.Jaskot, Optical: NOAO;CTIO;MCELS
The worlds of dark matter and regular matter connect only
through their gravity, and astronomers hope that giant
cavities in space known as ‘superbubbles’ might hold the key to understanding that connection. Our galaxy, like almost all others, is filled with an invisible substance known as dark matter. There is a wealth of evidence for dark matter, but the exact nature of the elusive substance remains a cosmic mystery. Astronomers desperately want to identify dark matter, and one way they can understand more about it is by observing its gravitational influence on normal matter. But galaxies are complex, busy places, with all sorts of interactions, events and energetic explosions happening all the time, so it’s difficult to separate dark matter’s influence from the normal behaviour of regular matter.