The Mary Sue

Several Good Reasons to Save the Galaxy—or at Least Dark Matter

by Jody Sollazzo Sep 12th

Would you like to save the galaxy but you don’t know how? Well, you can start by saving the canceled show Dark Matter.

Syfy Has Cancelled Dark Matter, Renewed Killjoys for Final Two Seasons

by Marykate Jasper Sep 2nd

Dark Matter has been cancelled by Syfy, but Killjoys will get two more seasons to wrap up its story.

Interview: Dark Matter‘s Torri Higginson Talks S3 Renewal, Aging in Hollywood, and Why It’s Awesome to Be a Woman in Sci-Fi

by Teresa Jusino Oct 6th

Dark Matter's Torri Higginson is busy. Not only was Dark Matter renewed for a third season on SyFy, but Higginson also stars on the CBC show, This Life, about a woman and her family dealing with her terminal cancer. Somehow, she also found time to shoot a supernatural web series called Inhuman Condition. I had the opportunity to speak with Higginson about her career, and the progress she thinks women are making in the entertainment industry.

Space Westerns FTW! Killjoys and Dark Matter Renewed for Second Seasons

The warrant is all!

by Carolyn Cox Sep 1st

Rejoice, Dark Matter and Killjoys fans!

The Mary Sue Interview: Syfy’s Dark Matter Brings The Badass Ladies In Force

Serialized sci-fi with humor, great characters, and awesome women? Yes please.

by Sam Maggs Jun 11th

The second I stepped into showrunner and co-creator Joseph Mallozzi's office and saw the big Cowboy Bebop poster tacked to his wall, I knew that everything was going to be okay. "I love the fact that it has a beginning, a middle, and an end," he said of the classic anime, "which is basically what I wanted for [Dark Matter]."

The Two Baddest Ladies of Stargate Have Joined Syfy’s New Show Dark Matter

My queens!

by Sam Maggs Feb 13th

Syfy's newest space opera Dark Matter is loading up with kick-ass women, so you can sign us right up, thanks.

Syfy Casts Lost Girl Alum And Broadway Star In New Show Dark Matter

by Sam Dec 19th

Syfy's newest drama, Dark Matter, has its cast and a shoot date. And now we all cross our fingers for it to be awesome.

AMC Picks Up Humans, Syfy Goes For Dark Matter

All sci-fi, all the time.

by Sam Maggs Oct 16th

2015 is stacking up to be a pretty great year for sci-fi programming, if recent acquisitions are any indication. Both AMC and Syfy have picked up shows with high sci-fi themes, including robots and lost spaceships.

International Space Station May Have Found Evidence of Dark Matter

by Jeff LaSala Apr 4th

Physicists and astronomers have hypothesized the existence of dark matter for decades, but evidence for the substance (if we can call it that?) has been scant at best -- until now, that is. The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer experiment (aka AMS), that detector of cosmic rays mounted on the International Space Station, has identified millions of antimatter particles that may provide long-sought evidence for the existence of dark matter.

600 Mysterious Gamma Ray Sources Spotted by Fermi Space Telescope

by Max Eddy Oct 18th

Researchers have found something surprising amongst the 1,873 gamma ray sources spotted by NASA's Fermi Gamma Ray Space Telescope. While about 1,200-odd sources are pretty standard, scientists have no clue as to what is producing some 600 sources of gamma rays. Given the high-energy nature of gamma rays, nearly all of the possible answers to this puzzle are dramatic on a massive scale. Pulsars, massive collapsed stars that shine gamma rays from opposite sides as they spin, are well known sources of gamma rays, as are black holes which produce the energy as a product of consuming huge amounts of mass. The collision of galaxies creates huge shock waves that could also be responsible for producing at least some of the gamma ray bursts, but there's another more tantalizing possibility: Dark matter.

Massive Cosmic Collision Captured By Telescopes

by Erin Podolak Jun 22nd

An epic tale of space history is just coming to light, as new images pieced together by several different telescopes around the world and in space show that the galaxy cluster Abell 2744, more colloquially known as Pandora's Cluster, was formed by a massive cosmic collision of at least four separate galaxy clusters.

The cluster's history is both complex and violent, with the extreme crash that brought the galaxy clusters together occurring over a span of 350 million years. The galaxies themselves make up less than 5 percent of the mass of the cluster itself. The gas, which makes up around 20 percent, is emitted as X-rays (shown in the above image in red). The remaining 75 percent of the cluster is made of dark matter (shown in the image in blue). Dark matter does not emit, absorb, or reflect light so the best way to detect its presence is by tracking its apparent gravitational attraction.