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Mysterious, Nearly Invisible Dwarf Galaxy Challenges Dark Matter Model

posted by mrpg on Wednesday January 31 2024, @08:31AM   Printer-friendly
from the noone-knows-how-the-cloud-works dept.

fliptop writes:

A nearly invisible dwarf galaxy is challenging the model of dark matter. An international team of astronomers, led by the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) in collaboration with the University of La Laguna (ULL) and other institutions, discovered this fascinating galaxy dubbed "Nube."

Nube, which means "Cloud" in Spanish, was named by the 5-year-old daughter of one of the researchers, aptly reflecting the galaxy's ghostly and diffuse appearance. Its discovery is significant because its faint surface brightness allowed it to remain undetected in previous sky surveys, despite its considerable size.

"With our present knowledge we do not understand how a galaxy with such extreme characteristics can exist," says study first author Mireia Montes, researcher at the IAC and the ULL, in a media release.

Nube is unique in its properties, being ten times fainter yet ten times more extended than other dwarf galaxies with a similar number of stars. Its discovery is akin to finding a hidden treasure in a well-explored attic. Nube is large and yet faint, a ghostly apparition in the universe. To put it into perspective, it's about one-third the size of the Milky Way but has a mass comparable to the Small Magellanic Cloud.

What sets it apart is its significant amount of dark matter, an invisible substance that does not emit, absorb, or reflect light, making it undetectable by traditional telescopes.

Related: Bizarre Galaxy Discovered With Seemingly No Stars Whatsoever

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  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday February 03 2024, @06:38AM

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Saturday February 03 2024, @06:38AM (#1342907) Journal

    But my point stands - the vast majority of possible statments within most logical systems will be nonsensical, and thus improvable.

    And as I noted, you have a special class of unprovable statements which aren't unprovable because of nonsensicality.

    because the axioms on which the statement is based cannot themselves be proven.

    Axioms are always true in the logical system by definition. When operating in a system of logic, they are their own proof.

    Again, this is a different issue. In any system containing natural number axioms, one can come up with unprovable statements which do not conflict with the axioms of the system or are nonsensical. It's a deeper reason.