The discovery of 9 stars in the "Toucan" galaxy
The discovery of 9 stars in the "Toucan" galaxy advances research on the concept of "cosmic dark matter"
An international scientific team recently discovered nine stars in the "Toucan Dwarf Galaxy," which leads to the belief that this galaxy is much larger than previously thought and that it contains large amounts of "dark matter."
This discovery, which was reported in the journal Nature Astronomy on February 1, 2021, almost doubles the total number of known stars in this small, low-luminosity galaxy located 163,000 light-years from Earth. In addition, these new stars are farther away from the center of the galaxy and are believed to be even older than those already known to have formed after the Big Bang.
Researchers say that the discovery of a small number of stars on the outskirts of this fossil galaxy sheds new light on the "dark matter" that fills the universe and provides evidence of the state of galactic interaction or collision, that is, the process of merging two galaxies in space, which is scientifically called "galaxies eating each other." ".
The British newspaper "The Guardian" quoted the international research team that discovered the stars as saying that it is possible that these ancient and distant stars were formed elsewhere. Thus, the Toucan Dwarf Galaxy would result from the merger of two primordial galaxies, one much smaller than the other.
In fact, in order to "tie" these distant stars within a galaxy, the Toucan Dwarf Galaxy needs much more dark matter than scientists thought. This is the first evidence that the galaxy has an "extended dark matter halo" held together by gravity.
According to the scientists, “This indicates that the first galaxies may have been much larger than previously thought, and it will be interesting to take a closer look at other ancient dwarf galaxies to see if they also have stars far beyond their galaxies.”
According to Justin Reed, a physics researcher at the University of Surrey in Britain, who was not involved in the study: “Although we still do not know what dark matter is specifically, discoveries like this are slowly lifting the veil on this topic.”
Source : websites