One of the biggest questions in the scientific world right now revolves around something we can't see, and can't directly detect in any other way either. Based on the movements of galaxies, astronomers know that there must be something with significant mass affecting their gravity, but they don't know what this substance is -- or even if it is a substance at all. They call this unknown force dark matter.
Scientists typically try to study dark matter by looking at the universe on a large scale. The idea is that by using instruments like the Euclid space telescope, they can observe the movements of distant galaxies, and from these movements they can calculate mass and work out how much dark matter they contain.
However, astrophysicists at the University of California, Berkeley have a different approach they are working on. Published recently in the journal Physical Review Letters, one paper proposes making use of a nearby supernova to study dark matter in detail.
A supernova is an extremely dramatic event, when a star comes to the end of its life and runs out of fuel. Once it has burned through all its fuel the star collapses to a tiny core and then explodes in a huge outpouring of energy. In that outpouring of energy could be the clue to understanding dark matter, as scientists search these extreme conditions for evidence of a theoretical type of dark matter particle called an axion.