Scientists spotted a galaxy with no dark matter, and they can’t figure out why it exists

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The research team, led by scientists at Yale, describes the study of a far-off galaxy called NGC 1052-DF2. Using observations from the Hubble Space Telescope and the Dragonfly Telephoto Array, the team discovered that the galaxy appeared dramatically different than others they had seen. It wasn’t long after that they realized it was missing one of the things that, according to all prior research, makes galaxies tick: dark matter.

“This invisible, mysterious substance is the most dominant aspect of any galaxy,” Pieter van Dokkum, a Yale professor and lead author of the study, explains. “So, finding a galaxy without it is unexpected. It challenges the standard ideas of how we think galaxies work, and it shows that dark matter is real. It has its own separate existence apart from other components of galaxies. This result also suggests that there may be more than one way to form a galaxy.”

The researchers describe the galaxy as looking like “a diffuse blob sprinkled with very compact star clusters.” The stars were moving very slowly, which seemed odd to the scientists since they expected to see speeds up to three times greater. Those expected speeds factor in the existence of dark matter and its gravitational effects, but because the scientists believe all the gravity present in the galaxy is accounted for by the mass of the stars, there must be no (or at least very, very little) dark matter present there.  – READ MORE

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