Separation Anxiety: Cosmic collision may shed light on dark matter

Some 3 billion years ago, two massive clusters of galaxies collided head on. The debris from this ancient cosmic train wreck, astronomers say, might pose a new puzzle about the invisible material believed to account for most of the mass in the universe.

ILLUMINATION NEEDED. Illustration of the galaxy cluster Abell 520, in which dark matter (blue), hot gas (red), and galaxies (yellow and orange) might have gone their separate ways.