Dark matter responsible for keeping galaxies intact

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HARROW: Scientists have discovered an unusual X-ray signal coming from space, which they say could be proof of the existence of dark matter. Dark matter is held responsible for keeping galaxies intact.
The unusual signal was observed while analyzing two celestial objects. The signal was weak, atypical photon emission that could not be attributed to any known form of matter.
Scientists at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland studied the X-ray data collected by the European Space Agency’s XMM-Newton spacecraft. They identified a strange spike in the X-ray emissions coming from two different regions, which were identified as the Andromeda galaxy and the Perseus galaxy cluster. The scientists found that the signal did not correspond to any known particle or atom. Therefore they are speculating that the signal may have been produced by dark matter.
Till now, dark matter’s existence has been thought to be hypothetical. But it is believed that it makes up at least 80 percent of the universe. It is not run by any standard physics models, apart from the gravitational force. If the latest discovery is found to be true then it could usher in a new era in astronomy.
Oleg Ruchayskiy of EPFL and a co-author of the study scheduled to be published in the journal Physical Review Letters, said, “The signal’s distribution within the galaxy corresponds exactly to what we were expecting with dark matter, that is, concentrated and intense in the center of objects and weaker and diffuse on the edges.”
Astronomers have long believed that visible matter is not enough to cause the rotation and revolutions of objects in the universe. Then there are the many gravitational forces that also exist in the universe. There has to be something that holds everything together. Or else galaxies would have torn themselves apart a long time ago.
“There is something missing,” added Ruchayskiy. “From this, the scientists deduced that there must be an invisible kind of matter that does not interact with light, but does, as a whole, interact by means of the gravitational force.”