Cambridge, U.K.—Researchers here say they have found the first physical properties of dark matter, the invisible stuff that makes up most of the substance of the universe. In research that is yet to be written up—let alone published—a team led by Gerry Gilmore of the Institute of Astronomy at Cambridge University saw a common feature in dwarf galaxies that are satellites of our own Milky Way galaxy: They all had a core of dark matter of a uniform size and temperature—somewhat wanner than the most popular theories of dark matter predict. Gilmore suggests this could be "an intrinsic property of dark matter." The claim alone "will generate a lot of excitement," says cosmologist Robert Nichol of the University of Portsmouth, U.K.
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