Zooming in on dark matter

Most matter in the Universe is dark and completely different in nature from the matter that makes up stars, planets and people. Galaxies form and grow when gas cools and condenses at the center of enormous clumps of this dark matter, the so-called dark matter haloes.

An international research team led by Prof. WANG Jie from the National Astronomical Observatories of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (NAOC) used supercomputers in China and Europe to zoom in on a typical region of a virtual universe as if zooming in on an image of the Moon to see a flea on its surface.

The study was published in Nature on Sept.