Astronomers are scouring the cosmos for fingerprints of the invisible — tiny clumps of pure dark matter that might solve a long-standing cosmic mystery. The post In a Monster Star’s Light, a Hint of Darkness first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Last October, as the James Webb Space Telescope beamed down its first long exposures of the sky near the constellation Eridanus, astronomers began to piece together the story of a dim, flickering point of light that seemed to emerge from the deepest recesses of the universe. Whatever it was, it glimmered for too long to be a supernova; a single star, too, was off the table. “It feels like you’re…