New Hubble Map of Dark Matter…03.29.10

Excerpted from Discovery News:

“Dark matter makes up the majority of mass in our universe. However, we cannot directly measure the stuff as it doesn’t interact with electromagnetic radiation (i.e. it doesn’t emit or reflect any light), but we can indirectly observe its presence.

In this beautiful multicolored Hubble Space Telescope image, the distribution of mostly dark matter has been calculated and mapped. Basically, the location and density of anything with mass has been plotted in a 3D representation of the cosmos.

But if the majority of matter (i.e. dark matter) cannot be seen, how did Hubble work out its location?…”