Unexpected Dark Matter Discoveries From Super Distant Quasars

Hello INF person, this is Anton, and today I wanted to discuss one of the recent studies that was actually able to investigate some of the most distant quers, or these really massive black holes and galaxies around them, from some of the farthest regions in the universe. In the process, it discovered something somewhat unusual about Dark Matter around them, and specifically, this recent study was able to calculate the amount of Dark Matter around these sers by looking at the motion of the gas around the squer, even though it was over 20 7 billion light years away from us. In this case, they managed to do this for two separate quers, discovering important similarities and making important conclusions about how dark matter changed over time, so let's talk about this in a little bit more detail.

But I guess let's first discuss what exactly these objects are and what we know about Dark Matter so far. First of all, when we talk about quers it usually refers to an extremely distant object, a super bright object that's entirely powered by a super massive black hole in the middle. They're actually a little bit different from a typical active Galactic nucleus like the ones we have near our galaxy, mostly because in this case they form a kind of a beacon visible from anywhere in the universe; that's not the case for all super massive black holes. The majority of quizzers known to us seem to have existed early on in the first three billion years of the existence of the universe, and though some quers existed even later, some of the brightest and the most powerful seem to have existed early on and disappeared over time.

But because back then there were so many quers and all of them were powered by these super massive black holes, they very likely played a super important role in helping the universe evolve over time because of the amount of energy they were producing. But exactly what those effects were and how they changed the universe is of course not something we know yet. As of 2025, over a million quers have already been discovered, with the vast majority of them discovered when the universe was only about 2 to 3 billion years old. Because they're so powerful and so bright, it also becomes possible to measure a lot of other properties around them even if they're super far away.

In this recent study, chinu and his team essentially took a look at two distin quers in order to see if they can actually measure the content of Dark Matter inside of those quers by looking at how gas moves around them. Specifically, they wanted to compare this to what we know about Dark Matter contents in the modern Universe, especially when looking at various galaxies and Galactic Halos and comparing how gas moves around galaxies today with a gas moving around quers back then. Now today, based on a lot of different predictions and a lot of different calculations when it comes to this mysterious Dark Matter, researchers believe that pretty much every Galaxy contains a kind of a halo around itself, within which we find a lot of gas, a lot of stars, and that basically causes the Galaxy to spin in a certain way. Though they haven't been observed directly, the effects of these Halos are visible through, for example, the famous gravitational Ling effect.

For example, the gravitational Ling of a certain Galactic cluster will usually be the result of all of the mass inside this Halo that seems to contain a lot of gas but also a lot of dark matter. But the thing in the last decade or so, based on observations of a lot of different galaxies and especially star forming galaxies that are usually very bright and produce a lot of light in many of these massive disc Galaxies—for example, the younger they are and the farther from Earth they to basically at high red shifts—many of these galaxies were discovered to be dominated mostly by gas and contained less Dark Matter compared to galaxies near us. In other words, a lot of previous studies discovered a kind of a decrease of the overall content of dark matter with increasing red shift, although in this case they mostly measure the effective radius or basically a much smaller region inside the Galaxy where we actually see most of the gas and most of the Stars. Here, the scientists were not measuring the entire Halo, and so here there was a really important question.

The question in regards to the distribution of dark matter and the changes in this distribution over time arises because, through understanding of dark mattera Evolution and how it changed over time in various galaxies, it becomes a little bit easier to explain certain Galactic observations and, of course, understand how galaxies like the Milky Way evolve over time. So here, researchers did something a little bit more extreme: they basically found some of the brightest and some of the most distant quers and found an intriguing way to measure Galactic curves inside those quers. This idea of Galactic curves is, of course, how we discover Dark Matter to begin with; this was originally discovered back in the 70s by the famous Vera ruin, who noticed that galaxies seem to actually spin way faster than they should be spinning, yet they're not falling apart, so something here was holding them together. That something, to her, was possibly this invisible dark matter.

Though we obviously have other explanations like the hypothesis known as M today dark matter—an invisible particle still seems to be the best explanation so far—we just don't really know what kind of a particle it is yet. And so, this was basically a study of Galactic curves but for some of the most distant galaxies out there, 27 billion light years away from us. To do all of this, researchers used ionized carbon, here, by measuring various specific emissions of carbon and by using Alma or at takama large millimeter array; they manag to map the movement of all of this gas extremely accurately. So basically, here they saw this gas move around the Galaxy even though it was ridiculously far, and they did this for two separate quers at ridiculous distances.

This is an extremely similar way to how this was done with other objects and other similar galaxies with active star formation, and the reason this is important is once again because it helps us to determine these Galactic curves and helps us understand how mass in this galaxy seems to move. Basically, this Galactic curve helps us understand how much normal matter versus Dark Matter there seems to be presentence, and, well, surprisingly in this case they discovered something they really didn't expect. These galaxies or these quers seem to contain a ridiculous amount of Dark Matter—way way more than predicted and expected, way more than predicted from previous studies and way more than expected based on the extrapolation from much closer galaxies. And here, this only suggests one thing: the mass of most of these galaxies or these quers is predominantly dark matter as well, containing massive Dark Matter Halos and Poss representing some of the largest halos in the early Universe.

This is when the universe was only about 800 million years old—these were actually some of the first galaxies as well—but intriguingly, the overall proportion of dark matter and visible matter is actually extremely similar to what we find in a normal modern Galaxy, such as for example the Milky Way. As a matter of fact, the rotation curve here is very similar to a normal this galaxy such as for example the Andromeda. And so, here there's a bit of a mystery: we seem to observe the overall proportion of Dark Matter decrease over time as we move away from planet Earth until we see these distant quers, where the proportion of Dark Matter suddenly increases dramatically and seems to be very similar to a typical modern Galaxy. And so the question here is why, and what's really happening here, and so let's discuss some of the potential explanations.

First of all, it's of course great to see another confirmation for the existence of this dark matter phenomenon so far away; it means that even back then Dark Matter was pretty much everywhere and already done dominated various galaxies just as predicted by various models. But the fact that the proportion of Dark Matter seems to be larger than expected is possibly connected to the formation and the activity of these super massive black holes. It's not entirely clear what's actually affecting what, but there might be a direct link between massive amounts of dark matter and the active super massive black hole in the center that are then causing the entire galaxy to grow really fast and to develop way faster than expected, recycling huge amount of gas that will eventually create lots and lots of stars. And so here, one of the potential explanations is that dark matter seems to play a very big role in helping these early galaxies develop very quickly and in helping these black holes grow super quick as well.

In other words, the only reason the squeezer is so bright and this galaxy is so massive is actually because there was a huge chunk of dark matter in this region that attracted a lot of mass and suddenly caused everything to become super active, or at least that's one of the potential explanations. On the other hand, maybe it's the other way around—maybe the formation of the super massive black hole and its ridiculous activity is somehow attracting more Dark Matter, possibly by creating huge amounts of turbulence around the Galaxy, which essentially funnels a lot of mass, including Dark Matter, into itself. In other words, the only thing we know for sure is that there is a direct link between super massive black ho activity and a huge amount of dark matter, but what's causing what to become bigger is unclear. Although what's clear is that it seems to contain up up to 10 times more Dark Matter than a lot of other galaxies observed at various high red shifts, and so whatever this region is, it's extremely enriched in this unusual particle.

As a matter of fact, the conclusion here is that this might represent one of the densest regions in the early universe, or some kind of a very unusual hot spot for matter to basically qu us in a single spot, which I guess once again confirms that the early Universe was just very unusual, very different, and contain a lot of activity we don't expect today. But at least now we have actual evidence and actual confirmation that even as far back as 13 billion years in the past, Dark Matter already existed and was already quite prevalent in a lot of these early galaxies and potentially played a much more important role than we can even imagine. Because right now it's kind of difficult to explain why these unusual quers are so massive, why they're so active, and why they seem to concentrate so much mass in such a small dense region, but I'm sure we'll get some additional observations in the near future that will help us answer these questions or even more importantly possibly guide us to the answer behind what Dark Matter even is and finally resolve this mystery once and for all.

Now, as of 2025, it's still a mystery and nobody still has any idea what particle this might be, but we'll definitely come back and talk more about all of this in some of the future videos. Until then, thank you for watching; subscribe, share this with someone who about space and Sciences, come back tomorrow to learn something else. So put this on patreon by joing Chanel membership or by buying the wonderful person t-shirt you can find in the description; stay wonderful, I'll see you tomorrow, and as always, bye-bye [Music] [Music] e.