A new galaxy has been discovered that was hiding in plain sight.
Galaxy X
New research finds evidence of a dark matter dwarf galaxy orbiting the Milky Way.
Galaxy Rangers
In an earlier post I wrote about one of the mysteries of dark matter. While dark matter matches most observations very well, it doesn’t do well in the area of dwarf galaxies. In particular, computer simulations predict that there should be many more dwarf galaxies than we observe. This has been taken to mean that either the simulations are somehow flawed, or dark matter isn’t the complete solution we’ve thought. But now new research has found that dark matter simulations might be right after all.
A Difficulty with Dwarfs
Most of the predictions of cold dark matter agree very well with observation, which is why it is a dominant part of modern cosmology. But there are aspects of the dark matter model that don’t agree well with observation. Take, for example, the clustering of dwarf galaxies around the Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies.