What happens when you map out the farthest stars in our Milky Way galaxy? You can trace how the gravity of a neighboring galaxy affected those distant stars' positions as our neighboring galaxy heads to a collision with our galaxy, leaving a wake among those stars. You can also use this wake to study the properties of dark matter, since dark matter does not emit or absorb light, and so is very hard to study. But dark matter does have gravity, and different theoretical versions of dark matter result in different gravitational tugs on those far out stars, resulting in different potential wakes left behind our in-falling neighbor!

This show was originally broadcast live on May 28, 2021 @ 5 PM (ET) / 2 PM (PT).

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