An international team of astronomers has found no trace of dark matter in the galaxy AGC 114905. This reinforces the belief that strangely it seems that there are galaxies in the universe that do not contain this mysterious form of invisible matter.
Researchers, led by Pavel Mansera Pinia of the University of Groningen and the ASTRON Observatory in the Netherlands, will publish the paper in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society in the Royal Astronomical Society. arXiv), spent 40 hours of detailed observations with a highly advanced telescope in this galaxy, which is 250 million light-years from Earth and about the size of our own galaxy (but contains a thousand times fewer stars). But they failed to detect the slightest trace of dark matter.
The prevailing scientific theory so far is that all galaxies can only exist if they are held back by dark matter and its gravitational “adhesive” force. The same researchers had previously discovered six galaxies with little to no dark matter, but the scientific community was reluctant to accept the discovery, believing that incorrect measurements had been made. But the new, more in-depth observations, which once again found no dark matter, seem to confirm that this is something that is happening in the universe.
“What we expected and hoped for happened, as our previous measurements are confirmed. Of course the problem remains that the theory predicts that there must be dark matter in the galaxy AGC 114905, but our observations tell us that it does not exist. “In fact, the gap between theory and observation has become even bigger,” Pinia said.
Astronomers are already examining a second galaxy carefully, and if they still do not indirectly observe the “signature” of dark matter in it, then they will further reinforce the “heretical” theory that galaxies can indeed exist without dark matter.
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