Research report 2013 - Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics

Dark matter

Authors
Lindner, Manfred; Marrodán Undagoitia, Teresa; Schwetz-Mangold, Thomas; Simgen, Hardy
Departments
Teilchen- und Astroteilchenphysik (Manfred Lindner)
Summary
Dark Matter has been postulated for the first time by the Swiss astronomer Fritz Zwicky who analyzed the kinetic energy of galaxies. This allowed him to derive the total mass of the system which turned out to be much larger than the visible mass. Meanwhile, there are a number of further observations, which also point to the existence of Dark Matter that should amount to overall 27% of the Universe, whereas ordinary matter contributes only 5%. This is why presently large efforts are undertaken with experiments like XENON100 or XENON1T in order to directly detect Dark Matter.

For the full text, see the German version.

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