A section of the cosmos which has no celestial bodies.
By Raif Karerat
In a recently published paper in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, researchers have suggested a section of the cosmos on the edge of the Milky Way may have the highest concentration of dark matter found within the galaxy.
According to The Washington Post, dark matter is “a term for the as-of-yet unobserved matter that must be bulking up cosmos, giving galaxies the gravity they need to spin at the rates they do without falling to pieces.”
Scientists are still trying to ascertain how dark matter interacts with the rest of the universe, so the discovery of ample dark matter in the star-system Triangulum II could be a game-changer for the field of astrophysics.
“The total mass I measured was much, much greater than the mass of the total number of stars—implying that there’s a ton of densely packed dark matter contributing to the total mass,” study author and Caltech Assistant Professor of Astronomy Evan Kirby said in a statement.
According to The Post, the mini-galaxy — which consists of just 1,000 stars compared to the 100 billion of our own galaxy — may be our best-ever candidate for trying to detect the gamma rays that certain particles of dark matter produce when they interact with one another.
It’s usually difficult to pick up gamma rays in the “noise” of space, but Triangulum II is so devoid of celestial bodies that scientists could probably make decent observations on the phenomenon if it’s present.
2 Comments
what is the sound of nothing?
Is this picture unrelated to the article?