University of Miami astrophysicist Nico Cappelluti studies the sky. An assistant professor in the Physics Department, Cappelluti is intrigued by the cosmic phenomena of super massive black holes, the nature of dark matter, and active galactic nuclei, which is the very bright light source found at the center of many galaxies.
Recently, Cappelluti published findings that could give insight on a subject scientists and astrophysicists have been investigating for decades: What is dark matter and where does it come from?
According to Esra Bulbul, an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and co-author in Cappelluti's study, about 95 percent of the mass in the universe is made up of material that is unknown and invisible to scientists, that is dark matter.
Cappelluti's study, published in The Astrophysical Journal and entitled, "Searching for the 3.5 keV line in the deep fields with Chandra: the 10 MS observations," examines an interesting light source that was captured by four different telescopes each pointing in a different direction in the sky. The source of light is unfamiliar and unrecognizable to scientists and has caused quite a stir in the world of astrophysics. Bulbul also found the emission line while studying clusters of galaxies in 2014.
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