Galactic clash sheds new findings

Space telescopes have captured images of a mammoth collsion between two galaxy clusters that have shed some light into the Universe's mysteries dark matter, NASA has said.

The images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope and Chandra x-ray Observatory show a clear separation between dark and ordinary matter during the clash 5.7 billion light years from earth, the U.S. space agency said.

As the two clusters merged at speeds of millions of miles an hour, the hot gas in each cluster collided and slowed down, the astronomers said. The dark matter did not.

'It is in our view an important step forward to understanding the properties of the mysterious dark matter' said a source of the University of California, Santa Barbara. 'Dark matter makes up five times more matter in the Universe than ordinary matter. This study confirms that we are dealing with a very different kind of matter. And were able to study it in a very powerful collision of two clusters of galaxies'.

The discovery confirms the findings in 2006 of another collision known as the Bullet Cluster, which also showed a clear separation between dark and ordinary matter.

Around a fifth of the Universe is believed to consist of dark matter, spreading out in mysterious filaments, sheets and clusters. But, with present technology it cannot be seen directly. Its existence is percieved indirectly, through the gravitational pull it exerts on light.