Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne

Hubble spies dwarf galaxies in Big Bang frontier fields

23 October 2015 Astronomy Now

Hubble Space Telescope observations have taken advantage of gravitational lensing to reveal the largest sample of the faintest and earliest known galaxies in the universe, formed just 600 million years after the Big Bang. Astronomers have determined, for the first time with some confidence, that these small galaxies were vital to creating the universe that we see today.

Dark matter even darker than once thought

28 March 2015 Astronomy Now

Astronomers using observations from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory have studied how dark matter in clusters of galaxies behaves when the clusters collide. The results show that dark matter interacts with itself even less than previously thought, and narrows down the options for what this mysterious substance might be.

Researchers detect possible signal from dark matter

13 December 2014 Astronomy Now

EPFL scientists have picked up an atypical photon emission in X-rays coming from space, and say it could be evidence for the existence of a particle of dark matter. If confirmed, it could open up new perspectives in cosmology.