Could Einstein Be Wrong? A Dark Matter Map Raises Even More Questions About the Universe

What exactly is dark matter, and why is it so prevalent across the Universe? What or who made it? Where did it come from? Scientists know for sure that dark matter exists thanks to multiple reasons, and one of them is represented by calculations showing that the existence of a lot of galaxies wouldn’t have been possible without the presence of a large amount of a mysterious form of matter.

Although there are many other questions to answer about dark matter, scientists from the Dark Energy Survey created a map showing the distribution of the mysterious type of matter across vast amounts of space. BBC wrote about the subject, and the scientists involved had been using weak gravitational lensing to locate large portions of dark matter.

Diving into the depths of the Cosmos using a 570-megapixel camera

The scientists conducted observations using the Victor M. Blanco telescope’s 570-megapixel camera from Chile’s Cerro Tololo observatory between 2013 and 2019. The results reveal that the distribution of dark matter is “smoother” and more spread out than the current theories predict. Therefore, the observations could indicate a fallacy in Einstein’s theory of general relativity, intriguing the scientists.

Dr Niall Jeffrey from École Normale Supérieure, in Paris, who assembled the map, declared:

If this disparity is true then maybe Einstein was wrong,
You might think that this is a bad thing, that maybe physics is broken. But to a physicist, it is extremely exciting. It means that we can find out something new about the way the Universe really is.

Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity was proposed more than a hundred years ago, in 1915, and it plays a major role in astronomy today. The theory states that what we perceive as gravity arises from curvatures of spacetime made by large objects such as planets.