Avinash 0 Report post Posted February 28, 2005 A galaxy made almost entirely of dark matter has been discovered. It's the first galaxy found to have no stars at all, but it fits well with predictions made by astrophysicists about where the Universe's missing mass should be. "We've thrown as many tests at it as we can, and it looks like a dark galaxy," says Robert Minchin from Cardiff University, UK, one of an international team of astronomers that made the find. Without dark matter to hold them together, rapidly rotating galaxies would simply fly apart. More than 90% of our particular Galaxy's mass seems to be dark matter. The dark galaxy, named VIRGOHI21, is in the Virgo cluster, a large group of galaxies about 50 million light years away. It has roughly 10% of the mass of our own Galaxy, the Milky Way. The discovery will be reported in the Astrophysics Journal1. The astronomers used the powerful Isaac Newton Telescope on La Palma in Spain's Canary Islands, to look for any scraps of visible light from the area; they found nothing. The team now plans to use radio telescopes to hunt for more dark galaxies. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Guest guest Report post Posted March 4, 2005 These particles of dark matter are much larger than regular matter, while the regular matter is made up of tiny particles that are atomic in size, the dark matter is made up of much larger particles , which are sometimes planet sized, It is truly amazing. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Kulapavana 0 Report post Posted March 4, 2005 "The astronomers used the powerful Isaac Newton Telescope on La Palma in Spain's Canary Islands, to look for any scraps of visible light from the area; they found nothing." and they called this "nothing" a "dark galaxy"?... ok, whatever... Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
