Scientists say that the invisible and mysterious dark matter makes up about 27% of all material in the universe.
Regular or normal matter that you see and touch every day takes up 5% and the remaining 68% comes from an enigmatic form of energy called dark energy.
According to NASA, dark matter serves as a type of “scaffolding” for the universe and computer models constructed to demonstrate the formation of galaxies show that galaxies are created when dark matter clumps together.
In other words, you usually can’t find a galaxy without a good amount of dark matter.
That is until a recent discovery that has been detailed in the journal Nature.
NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope took an image of a bizarre, ghostly looking galaxy called NGC 1052-DF2 that astronomers calculate to have little to no dark matter. This is the first galaxy astronomers have discovered to be so lacking in dark matter, which is thought to comprise 85% of our universe’s mass. (NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Scientific Visualization Studio)
A group of astronomers, who used both ground-based telescopes and NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, found an odd galaxy that they say has very little if any, dark matter.
According to the study, the galaxy, called NGC 1052-DF2, which is as big as our Milky Way, but only contains about 0.005% of its stars, has just .0025% the amount of dark matter that was expected.
The study’s lead author, Pieter van Dokkum of Yale University, says the all the mass of the galaxy can be accounted for from just its stars alone. “There doesn’t seem to be any room for dark matter”.
The researchers describe NGC 1052-DF2 as a large, fuzzy-looking galaxy that it doesn’t appear to have a central region or typical galaxy features others have.
They’ve nicknamed it the “see through” galaxy since other and more distant galaxies can be observed behind it.
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