In the search for the mysterious dark matter, physicists have used elaborate computer calculations to come up with an outline of the particles of this unknown form of matter. To do this, the scientists extended the successful Standard Model of particle physics which allowed them, among other things, to predict the mass of so-called axions, promising candidates for dark matter. The German-Hungarian team of researchers led by Professor Zoltán Fodor of the University of Wuppertal, Eötvös University in Budapest and Forschungszentrum Jülich carried out its calculations on Jülich's supercomputer JUQUEEN (BlueGene/Q) and presents its results in the journal Nature.
"Dark matter is an invisible form of matter which until now has only revealed itself through its gravitational effects. What it consists of remains a complete mystery," explains co-author Dr Andreas Ringwald, who is based at DESY and who proposed the current research. Evidence for the existence of this form of matter comes, among other things, from the astrophysical observation of galaxies, which rotate far too rapidly to be held together only by the gravitational pull of the visible matter. High-precision measurements using the European satellite "Planck" show that almost 85 percent of the entire mass of the universe consists of dark matter. All the stars, planets, nebulae and other objects in space that are made of conventional matter account for no more than 15 percent of the mass of the universe.
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