Inverse - 🌌 The earliest known dark matter

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August 15 2022

It is wild to think that 85 percent of all the matter in our universe is accounted for by a mere hypothesis. And yet, that is what dark matter is — almost impossible to trace, scientists believe it exists based on implications and inferences gathered by observing other astronomical phenomena, including our own galaxy, the Milky Way. One element of this theory that scientists cling to is that dark matter plays a foundational role in our universe, including its evolution since the Big Bang. To confirm these theories, they peer back in distance and time to try and measure very old and distant dark matter and see if it behaves as they expect based on their hypotheses and models. In today's top story, scientists did just that — but they didn't find what they had expected to. Scroll on to find out what they discovered instead.

What's New

LUMINARIES

Gaming

The King of Final Fantasy reveals why the series is “struggling”

Naoki Yoshida holds the future of Final Fantasy in his hands.

The producer of the hotly anticipated Final Fantasy XVI, set to release on PlayStation 5 in 2023, has also been the director of the massively multiplayer online roleplaying game Final Fantasy XIV since 2010.

Yoshida transformed FFXIV from an instant flop to a decade-spanning bop, which has since become the most profitable Final Fantasy game ever made and Square Enix’s biggest revenue driver of 2021, with more than 35 million monthly subscribers.

The man known affectionately as Yoshi-P shares his thoughts on the future of the beloved RPG franchise — and what's next for online games.

Space

Science

Astronomers discovered the earliest known dark matter — and it's not behaving as predicted

Even though it’s impossible to see it, dark matter fills the universe. And now, it seems increasingly likely it always has.

An international team from Japan used the Subaru Telescope at the controversial Mauna Kea Observatories complex to discover the earliest dark matter ever observed.

In a new paper published in Physical Review Letters, the team reports the earliest subtle traces of dark matter’s influence on galaxies in the young universe. They made the discovery after observing 1.5 million incredibly distant galaxies and their dark matter halos, peering back as far as 12 billion years.

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Oh my...

SPLAT

Biologists fired tardigrades out of a high-powered gun

In a lab at the University of Kent in the United Kingom, Alejandra Traspas and Mark Burchell shot frozen tardigrades from a gas-powered gun at 3,600 kilometers per hour — for science.

“We have fired tardigrades at high speed in a gun onto sand targets, subjecting them to impact shocks and evaluating their survival,” write Traspas and Burchell, in possibly the most compelling opening to a scientific paper we’ve ever seen.

Their results — which ranged from slightly dazed to completely demolished tardigrades — suggest it might be more difficult than expected for life to migrate between planets.

RETRO FUTURES

Apple TV+

The For All Mankind cast and showrunners explain that epic Season 3 finale

The alternate 1990s just ended with a bang, and we have a lot of questions.

To sort out the explosive finale, Inverse caught up with cast members Coral Peña (Aleida) and Jodi Balfour (Ellen), as well as showrunners Matt Wolpert and Ben Nedivi, to get the intel on why this season ended the way it did, the latest series time jump, and what it all means for Season 4. Spoilers ahead!

Inverse - 🌌 The earliest known dark matter

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