2024-01-10 05:08:54
Mysterious Nube: The Invisible Galaxy Challenges Science
The unusual structure of the galaxy calls into question existing theories.
An international team of researchers led by the Institute of Astrophysics of the Canary Islands and the University of La Laguna, as well as other institutions, has discovered the almost invisible dwarf galaxy Nube. The name, suggested by one of the researchers’ five-year-old daughter, reflects her blurry appearance.
The Nube Galaxy, which glows so faintly that it had previously gone undetected, has unique characteristics. It is ten times fainter and larger compared to other galaxies of the same type. Nube is a third the size of the Milky Way, but comparable in mass to the Small Magellanic Cloud.
“With our current knowledge, we cannot understand how a galaxy with such extreme characteristics could exist,” explains first author Mireia Montes.
The researchers used ultra-deep multicolor images from the Gran Telescope Canard to confirm the existence of this object. The distance to Nube is estimated to be 300 million light years, but upcoming observations should refine this figure.
The galaxy has aroused the interest of astronomers. “The general rule is that the density of stars in galaxies decreases as they move away from the center, but in Nube the star density doesn’t change much, which is what makes it so dim,” Montes says.
Nube questions the current model of dark matter. According to Ignacio Trujillo, the paper’s second author, this is one of the most extreme cases known and does not fit theoretical models. He also suggests that Nube’s unusual properties may indicate that dark matter particles have extremely low mass, which could connect the world on microscopic and cosmic scales.
The study was published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics .
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