Dark matter galaxy hints seen 10bn light-years away

trubble76 · #1 by **trubble76** » Jan 19, 2012 11:59 am

Astronomers have spotted a "dwarf" galaxy some 10 billion light-years away which may be made mostly of the mysterious material called dark matter.

The dwarf was found using a technique called gravitational lensing. It is only the second dark dwarf ever seen, and it is by far the most distant.

The fact that so few dwarf galaxies are seen in our own cosmic neighbourhood has remained a conundrum in astronomy.

The study in Nature could explain it: they may be overwhelmingly dark matter.

Dwarf galaxies often occur in the periphery of larger galaxies, where they are known as satellites - the Milky Way may have many as well.

Continues here.

Blip · #2 by **Blip** » Jan 19, 2012 12:27 pm

Fascinating! That would be a good one for the RatSkep Facebook page too :-)

ETA I've posted it there with an acknowledgement to Trubble76.

twistor59 · #3 by **twistor59** » Jan 19, 2012 12:35 pm

It is quite a sobering thought, that when physicists crow about the success of the current standard model, that only actually applies to a poxy tiny percentage of the matter in the observable universe. Please try harder guys and gals....

Geraint · #4 by **Geraint** » Jan 19, 2012 5:28 pm

The paper appeared on the arXiv today:
http://arxiv.org/abs/1201.3643

I actually know the first and last authors, it's nice to see them coming up with this cool stuff.

trubble76 · #5 by **trubble76** » Jan 19, 2012 6:16 pm

Blip wrote:Fascinating! That would be a good one for the RatSkep Facebook page too

ETA I've posted it there with an acknowledgement to Trubble76.

aww thanks, I had nothing to do with it though, I just read about it and reposted the story here.

Grace · #6 by **Grace** » Jan 29, 2012 10:17 pm

trubble, you found it and you shared. It's awesome that you went to the trouble to post it here -- pun absolutely intended.