Dark matter is the mysterious stuff that cosmologists think makes up some 85 percent of all the matter in the universe. A new theory says dark matter might resemble a known particle. If true, that would open up a window onto an invisible, dark matter version of physics.
The only way dark matter interacts with anything else is via gravity. If you poured dark matter into a bucket, it would go right through it because it doesn't react to electromagnetism (one reason you can stand on the ground is because the atoms in your feet are repelled by the atoms in the Earth). Nor does dark matter reflect or absorb light. It's therefore invisible and intangible.
Scientists were clued into its existence by the way galaxies behaved. The mass of the galaxies calculated from the visible stuff they contained wasn't enough to keep them bound to each other. Later, observations of gravitational lensing, in which light bends in the presence of gravity fields, showed there was something that made galaxy clusters; m;ore massive that couldn't be seen.
Source:by Jesse Emspak, Live Science Contributor
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