Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by janrinok on Friday March 30 2018, @09:39PM   Printer-friendly
from the Now-you-see-it-now-you-don't-because-it's-dark? dept.

A galaxy has been found containing no dark matter, but that proves dark matter is real?

A distant galaxy that appears completely devoid of dark matter has baffled astronomers and deepened the mystery of the universe's most elusive substance.

[...] In the Milky Way there is about 30 times more dark matter than normal matter. The latest observations focused on an ultra-diffuse galaxy – ghostly galaxies that are large but have hardly any stars – called NGC 1052-DF2.

The team tracked the motions of 10 bright star clusters and found that they were travelling way below the velocities expected. "They basically look like they're standing still," said van Dokkum.

The velocities gave an upper estimate for the galactic mass of 400 times lower than expected. "If there is any dark matter at all, it's very little," van Dokkum explained. "The stars in the galaxy can account for all of the mass, and there doesn't seem to be any room for dark matter."

Paradoxically, the authors said the discovery of a galaxy without dark matter counts as evidence that it probably does exist. A competing explanation for the fast-orbiting stars is that the way gravity drops off with distance has been misunderstood – but if this were the case, all galaxies should follow the same pattern.

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/mar/28/galaxy-without-any-dark-matter-baffles-astronomers. The findings are published in the journal Nature.


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Friday March 30 2018, @11:20PM

    by Ethanol-fueled (2792) on Friday March 30 2018, @11:20PM (#660600) Homepage

    I'm a farmhand, my job is to clean the horse penises before we collect the samples.

    I just needed the money, but those farmers are sick fucks. I ask them why we can't just leave the horses alone and let them breed naturally like the race horse breeders do and they all laugh and make hideous slurping and choking noises before telling me that's "just they way they do it." Their method is pretty convoluted, they use another male horse as a "teaser animal" and then when the stud jumps yank the stud at the last minute over to the side into a pocket-pussy stuffed into the neck-hole of an antique wooden pillory that, the farmers say, held actual negro slaves who had misbehaved centuries earlier. The farmers say that if you stand close enough to it you can still smell the rotten vegetables which were hurled at the slaves' faces during those days.

    One of the perks of being White and working on a farm is that you get cushier jobs working with the White farmers. Can't I just go pick vegetables with the Mexicans?